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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap.....„. Copyright No. 



Shelf. 



•A.5_Z 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/onbluewaterOOdeam 



By EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 



®n JBllie "Ullater, 8°, 60 illustrations . . $2.25 

Constantinople. 8" $1.50 

Stambotil Edition^ with 25 illustrations 2.25 

IbollanD anD its people. 8°, with i8 iiius- 

tions ....... 2.00 

F'ir7?zZ>i'Z'^^^z7z^;z, with 84 illustrations 2.25 

Spain anD tbe Spaniards. 8", with n illus- 
trations ....... 2.00 

Saragossa Edition, 8°, with 25 illus- 
trations . . . . . . . 2.25 

The illustrated editions of these three books are 

put up together (in jackets) in a box . . 6.50 

StuDies ot Paris. 8° 1.25 

/Ilborocco : 1fts people anD places. 8% with 

24 illustrations ..... 2.00 

^ilitar^ Xite in Utalg. 8°, with 8 illustra- 
tions ....... 2.00 

Library Edition, 6 vols., 8° (in box) . . lo.oo 



*' I take pleasure in stating that the editions of my works 
issued by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons have, from the out- 
set, been published with my authorization, and that the 
publishers have remitted to me each year the author's 
share of the proceeds of their sales." 

Edmo.ndo de Amicis. 

Turitt, Dec, 26, 1890. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London 




@ 



■Ss 



^ 



On Blue Water 
^by Edmondo de 
Amicis ^ ^ ^ 



TRANSLATED BY 
JACOB B. BROWN 



1IIlustrate5 



NEW YORK & LONDON -fe G. P. 
PUTNAM'S SONS '^ <4? -^ 



0/ 



nfC "^ ''-^^" ■» 



^' 






Copyright, 1897 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 



Ube Iknichecbocher press, l^ew It^otit 



CONTENTS. 



I. — -The Embarkation of the Emigrants 
II. — The Gulf of Lyons 
III. — Italy on Board Ship 
lY. — Forward and Aft . 

Y. — Ladies and Gentlemen . . ~' 

YI. — Loves and Grievances 
YII. — The Tropic of Cancer 
YIII. — A Yellow Ocean . 
IX. — Characters in the Steerage 
X. — The Women's Cabin 
XI. — Crossing the Line . 
XII. — Little Galileo 
XIII.— A Sea of Fire 
XIY.— A Blue Sea . 
XY. — Death on Board 
XYL— Devil Day . 
XYII. — In Extremis . 
XYIIL— To-MoRRow! . 
XIX. — America 
XX. — The Plata River 

iii 



1 
12 
29 
44 

to 

80 
118 
138 
160 
179 
193 
212 
232 
245 
268 
289 
307 
332 
353 
369 




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



Edmondo de Amicis, in his book, SuW Oceano^ 
" On Blue Water," has given an account of a voyage 
from Genoa to Buenos Ayres in the Galileo, a 
steamer carrying emigrants, — this and nothing more. 
The narrative begins at the wharf at Genoa, and 
ends when the tug leaves the ship's side in the harbor 
of Montevideo. The ship does not even touch at 
Gibraltar. The interest in the story, and it is not 
small, lies entirely in the study of the types of hu- 
manity on board. The writer's observant eye has 
singled out, his lively imagination has characterized, 
and his ready pen has described at least twenty 
different groups and characters taken from both ends 
of the vessel, all dramatic, saying and doing in every 
case just what such persons would say and do. 
Nothing is exaggerated, nothing is improbable. 
And these personalities are kept quite separate and 
distinct without the mention of a single name. 

De Amicis seem to have made the voyage on 
purpose to write the book. The " commissary " on 



vi tlranslator's ipretace* 

board the ship, to whom the writer had due in- 
troduction, and who is himself a rare character, was 
able to point out to his guest — so to speak — all the 
life that was going on ; and most inordinately must 
he have enjoyed talking it over with so appreciative 
a companion. 

It has been well said that the beauty of De Amicis' 
travels is that they are more than travels. They are 
not merely the record of so many passages a day ; 
they are travellings plus seeings, listenings, feelings, 
thinkings, talkings, love-makings ; — all that a warm- 
hearted, imaginative, educated young tourist would 
engage in ; yet they are told without displeasing 
egotism or tedious detail. 

His temperament is such that he is at home any- 
where. He can go off like Mungo Park on an hour's 
warning. He enjoys everything he sees, and sees 
everything that is to be enjoyed. 

The publishers under whose imprint this volume 
appears, have previously issued the authorized trans- 
lations of the earlier works by De Amicis on Con- 
stantinople, Holland, Spain, Morocco, Italy, and 
Paris. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 



" Overcome " ..... Frontispiece 

Donkey Engine ........ 

" Through the open hatchway I marked a woman 

WITH her head in THE BERTH AND SOBBING VIO- 
LENTLY " ........ 

" The huge steamer must have been like a new 

WORLD TO them" . . . 

" Burst out crying " . 

" Viva l' Italia " . 

In Port ...... 

" a steward came in with the coffee " 
"Overcome" ..... 

'' Lay huddled together " . 

" Her eyes rather too blue, her nose without 

character" . 
*' Next him a couple of young ladies who appeared 

TO BE relatives OR FRIENDS " 

" Perfect freedom from care " 

" Idle from necessity " 

" Above all the foremast " 

Block and Tackle 

Life-ring .... 

" I am mighty, but I fight fair " 

vii 



9 
11 
13 
15 
17 

19 

21 

27 
31 
38 
39 
41 
43 



Vlll 



•ffllustrations. 



" Dkessing the children " 45 

" The professor-husband " 74 

"Windlass" 79 

" Conjugating the verbs in an undertone " . .82 

" Women stood about with their infants in their 

arms as at the corners of the streets " . .87 

" His eyes fixed, his forehead wrinkled" . . 89 

" No ONE TOOK ANY HEED " . . . . . . 92 

" Mending his sleeve " ...... 96 

" Listening with an air of respectful deference " 104 

"MOLLUSKS" 113 

The Commissary . . . . . . . . 121 

" Sending a double spray of words into the ear of 
her husband on her left, and over the tenor 

on her right "......, 127 

" The tall priest ",...... 133 

" He failed not to * rattle down ' the stewards " . 143 

*' Grinding OUT curses" ...... 145 

" Gray, ruffled sea " . . . . . . . 159 

" Ready for anything " . . . . . .168 

" He owed his popularity to a large album full of 

nasty caricatures " 171 

" His ATTENTION HAD BEEN ATTRACTED BY THE TELE- 
graphic dial " ....... 175 

" Little Galileo " , 192 

" Explaining the equator to a group of emigrants 

in idiotically scientific phraseology " . . 197 

" The SECOND officer was a marine painter " . . 202 

On Deck 211 

" After them came the mother, held round the 

waist BY the hunchback SAILOR "... 223 



(S)n Blue Mater 



CHAPTER I 



THE EMBARKATION OF THE EJMIGHANTS 




ilT was towards evenino; when I 
reached the wharf. The embark- 
ation of the emio^rants had been 
going on for an hour ; and there 
lay the Galileo ^ filling up with 
misery as there passed over her 
gangplank an interminable procession of people, 
coming in groups out of the building opposite where 
the police official was examiniug passports. The 
greater part, having passed a night or two in the 
open air, lying about like dogs in the streets of 
Grenoa, were tired and drowsy. Workmen, peasants, 
women with children at the breast, little fellows 
with the tin medal of the Infant Asylum still hang- 

- Not the Galileo of the Societa di Navigazione Generale. 



2 ®n Blue Mater. 

ing around their necks, passed on their way, and 
almost everyone was carrying something. They liad 
folding chairs, they had bags and trunks of every 
shape in their hands or on their heads; their arms 
were full of mattresses and bedclothes, and their 
bei'tli tickets were held fast in their mouths. Poor 
mothers that had a child for each hand carried their 
bundles witli their teeth. Old peasant women in 
wooden shoes, holding up their skirts so as not to 
stumble over the cleats of the gangplank, showed 
bare legs that were like sticks. Many were bare- 
foot and had their shoes huno^ around their necks. 
From time to time there passed through all this 
wretchedness gentlemen in natty dusters, priests, 
ladies in plumed hats, leading a lapdog, or carrying 
a satchel, or perhaps a parcel of French novels of 
the well-known Levy edition. Then, suddenly, a 
stoppage of the procession and, amid a shower of 
blows and curses, a drove of cattle or a flock of sheep 
came along; and when they wei'e got on board, all 
frightened and sti'aggling here and there, they min- 
srled their bellowinij: and their bleatinof with the 
neighing of the horses in the forward part of the 
ship, w^ith the cries of sailors and porters, and with 
the stunning clatter of the donkey engine that was 
hoisting in whole piles of packing-cases. Then the 
train of emigi'ants moved on once more; faces and 
costumes from every part of Italy, strong, sad -eyed 
working men, others old, I'agged, dirty ; women en- 



Ubc JEmbarf^ation ot tbe JEmiGrants, 



ceinte, merry boys, half-tipsy youths, country fellows 
in their shirt-sleeves ; and boys, and still more boys, 
who hardly had put foot on deck, amid that throng 
of passengers, stewards, officers, company's 
employes, and custom-house people, when 
they stood amazed or lost their way as 
if in a crowded square. For two 
hours these 
people had 
been going 
on board ; 
and the great 
ship, move- 
less,likesome 
grim sea mon- 
ster that had 
fixed its fangs 
into the shore, still went on sucking Italian blood. 

The emigrants, as fast as they got on board, filed 
in front of a table at which was seated the commis- 
sary, who told them off in messes of half a dozen 
persons each, writing the names upon a printed form 
which he handed to the eldest, that he might go at 
meal hours and get the ration. Families of less than 
six persons went in with their friends or with stran- 
gers, as the case might be. While this business was 
going on there was evident in everyone a lively fear 
of being cheated in the matter of half- and quarter- 
fares for children and infants; fruit of that invinci- 




4 On JSlue Mater^ 

ble mistrust which the peasant feels for any man 
with a pen in his hand and a registry in front of 
him. Quarrels arose, there were protests and lament- 
ations. Then the families separated ; the men were 
passed to one side, while the women and children 
were shown to their cabins. And piteous it was to 
see these women clumsily descend the steep ladders 
and grope their way through the long, low between- 
decks among innumei'able berths, ai'ranged in tiers 
like the shelves in a silk-worm shed. Some, all per- 
plexed, would inquire about a lost article of sailors 
who did not understand one w^ord they said ; some 
sat down wherever it might be, dazed and exhausted ; 
others wandered about vaguely, looking with uneasi- 
ness at all those unknown travelling companions who 
were as uneasy as they ; and, like them, confused 
and frightened in this disorderly throng. Some who 
had come down one ladder, and saw others leading 
still on, down into the dark, refused to go any far- 
ther. Through the open hatchway I marked a woman 
with her head in the berth and sobbing violently. 
I soon learned that her young child had died almost 
suddenly an hour or two before, and that her hus- 
l)and was forced to leave its little body with the 
police to be taken to the hospital. Most of the 
women remained below, while the men, having laid 
by their things, went on deck again and leaned 
against tlie bulwarks. It was odd enough. The 
huge steamer, seen by most of them for the first 




*' Ubrougb tbe open batcbwav 11 mal•he^ a woman witb bcr bea5 in tbe bertb 

anb sobbing violently," 



6 On Blue Mater* 

time, must have been like a new world, full of 
strangeness and of mystery ; and yet not one looked 
about him or aloft, or paused to examine any of those 
many wonderful objects never seen before. Some 
would fix an attentive eye upon a trunk, or a neigh- 
bor's chair, or the number on a box, or whatever it 
might be ; others munched an apple, or nibbled a 
crust, — examining it at every bite as placidly as if 
they had been in front of their own stable. Some 
women had red eyes ; some boys were giggling, but 
their mirth was plainly forced. The greater part 
showed nothing but apathy or fatigue. The sky 
was clouded and the nio-ht was comino; oo. 

Suddenly furious cries were heard from the pass- 
port office, and people were seen running that way. 
It proved to be a peasant with a wife and four chil- 
dren, — all found by the examining physician to have 
the itch. The first few questions had shown the man 
to be out of his mind ; and, on being refused a pass- 
age, he had broken out into frenzy. 

On the wharf there were perhaps a hundred per- 
sons. Very few relatives of our emigrants. The 
greater part loungers or relatives of our ship's com- 
pany, quite used to such sepai'ations. 

When all were on board there ensued a kind of 
quiet in the ship, and the dull rumble of the engine 
could be heard. Almost all were on deck, crowded 
together and quite silent. These last few moments 
of waiting seemed an eternity. 



On Blue Mater* 



At last the sailors were heard shouting fore and 
aft, " CM non e passeggiere^ a terra^^^ — All ashore that 's 
going ashore. 

These words sent a thrill 
Galileo to the other. In 
strangers were out of 



was hauled ashore, 






from one end of the 

a few moments all 

the ship, the bridge 

the fasts cast off, the 

entering port closed, a 

whistle sounded, and 

the ship began to 

move. Then women 

burst out crying, 

youths who had 

been laughing 

grew serious, and 

bearded men 

hitherto stolid 

were seen to pass a 

hand across their eyes. 

This emotion contrasted 

strangely with the cool 

salutes that passed between 

the ship's company and their 

relatives on the wharf, — just 

as if it were a trip to Spezzia : 

" Don't forget me to the people 

at home. — You '11 see about that 

parcel ? — Tell Gigia (Louisa) I '11 do as she says. 

— Post it at Montevideo, please. — It 's all under- 




Ube lEtnbarl^attou ot tbe Bmiotants, 



stood about the wine, is it not ? — Pleasant voy- 
age to you. — Good-bye ! " A few persons who had 
just reached the wharf had only time to iling some 
bundles of ci«:ars or some oransres on board. These 
were duly caught but some of the last ones fell into the 
water. Lights began to twinkle in the city. The 
ship slid softly along through the darkness of 
the harbor almost furtively as it were, as if she were 
carrying off a cargo of kidnapped humanflesh. I 
made my way forward through the crowd of people 
all turned towards the land and 
looking at the amphitheatre of 
Genoa, now being rapidly il- 
luminated. A few were talk- 
ing in low tones. Here and 
there in the dusk women were 1 
seen with infants on their laps 
and their heads leaned hope- 
lessly on their hands. From 
the forecastle a voice called 
out in sarcastic tone, " Viva 
V Italia ! " and looking up I 
saw a tall thin old man who 
was shaking his fist at his na- 
tive country. As we passed 
out of the harbor it was night. 
Saddened by this spectacle I 
went aft again to the first-class cabin to find my 
stateroom. And it must be confessed that the first 




" Uiva I'-fftalia ! " 



10 On ifBlue Mater* 

descent into these submarine lodging-places is de- 
plorably like going for the first time into a prison 
with its cells. In those low, narrow cor I'i dors, 
tainted with the reek of bilge-water, the smell of 
oil lamps, the fragrance of sheep-skins, and with 
wafts of perfume fi'om the ladies, I found myself 
in the midst of harrying groups who all wanted 
the steward, and were behaving with the low- 
minded selfishness which characterizes almost all 
travellers in the first bustle of getting settled. A 
half-light fell upon the confusion here and there, and 
I caught glimpses of a beautiful blonde lady, three 
or four black-bearded men, a veiy tall priest, and 
the broad, bold face of an. angry stewardess. I heard 
Genoese, French, Italian, Spanish. At a turn of the 
corridor I came upon a negress. From a statei'oom 
came a solfeggio in a tenor voice. And opposite to 
that stateroom I found my own, — a cage of a place, 
about a half a dozen cubic meti'es in size, with a 
Procrustean bed on one side, a sofa on the other; 
on the third a barber's mirror over a fixed wash-hand 
stand, and beside the mirror a lamp on gimbals, 
swinging to and fro as if to say, '' What a fool you 
wei'e to set out for America." Above the sofa 
gleamed a round window like a huge glass eye, 
which seemed, as it caught mine, to wear a mocking 
expression. And, indeed, the idea of having to 
sleep for twenty-four nights in that suffocating cubi- 
culum, and the presentiment of the deadly dulness 



Zbc iBmbavhation of tbe lEmigrants* 



II 



the heat of the torrid zone, of the biim]i)ecl lieacls I 
should have in bad weather, for six thousand miles 

But it was too late to repent. I looked at my 

baggage, which said, O, so many things to me in that 
moment; I handled it as if it were a faithful dog, 
the last living relic of my house ; I prayed God I 
might not repent having spui'ned the proposals of an 
insurance agent ^vho came to tempt me the day be- 
fore leaving ; and then, blessing in my heart the good 
faithful friends that had stood by me until the last 
moment, I let myself be rocked to sleep upon the 
cradle of my country's sea. 




CHAPTER II 



THE GULF OF LYOISTS 




HEN I awoke it was broad day^ 
and the ship was 7'olliDg along 
in the Gulf of Lyons. Suddenly 
I heard the warbliui^rs of the tenor 
from the stateroom opposite; and 
from the one next to mine a sharp 
female voice, that cried : "Your brush! What do I 
know about your brush ? Find it yourself." A 
voice that revealed not only momentary vexation, 
but a hard, bitter disposition ; and which made one 
feel deeply for tbe owner of the missing article. 
Farther on another female voice was sin^iner a child 
to sleep. It was a queer strain with a modulation 
which did not seem to belong^ to one of our race. I 
supposed it might be the negress I had seen the 
evening before. The song was marred by the low 
hissing voices of a couple of stewardesses disputing 
in the coi'ridor about a ])icaggieUa (a towel). I 
listened, and needed V)ut few of their words to per- 

12 



Ubc Gulf ot %>^onB. 



13 



snade me that if there be a woman in the world that 
can hold way with a Genoese stewardess, it is a 
Venetian one. A steward came 
in witli the coffee. The first 
morning one notices 
everything. He was 
a handsome, disa- 
greeable-looking 
yonth, his hair drip- 
ping with oil, full of 
himself and smilino: 
at his own beauty 
like a conceited ac- 
tor. When asked 
what his name was 
he answered, ''An- 
tonio," with affected 
modesty as if that 
Antonio were the 
assumed name of a 
young duke disguised, 
with some amorous design, as "^ ' 
a cabin steward. When he had 
retired I went out myself, stag- 
gering up against the bulkheads ; "b 6tewat^ came fn wttb 

T , . . , , T . . tbe coffee." 

and, turning into the mam corn- 
dor, I marked the back of the gigantic priest of the 
evening before as he entered his stateroom. A step 
or two farther on I caught sight through the crack 




14 ^n mine Mater. 

of the door, and just as the green curtain fell, of 
a black-silk stocking being drawn by white hands 
upon a shapely leg. The passengei's were almost all 
still in their staterooms, whence issued the sounds 
of water being splashed, of brushes being whisked, 
and of trunks being rummaged. On the poop-deck 
were three persons only. The sea was ruffled, but 
of a beautiful blue color, and the weather was fine. 
No land was visible. 

But the sight to see was the the third-class people. 
The larger part of these emigrants, overcome with 
sea-sickness, lay huddled together, — some throw^n 
across the benches like the dead or dying, wdth faces 
all dirty and liair all rumpled, amid a tangle of 
ragged wn'aps. There wei'e families crowded in pite- 
ous gi'oups with the dazed and dejected look of 
houseless people ; the father sitting up asleep, the 
mother with her head on his shoulder, the chil- 
dren slumbering on the deck with their heads on 
their parents' knees, — mere heaps of rags with noth- 
inoj stickino^ out but a child's ai'm or a woman's hair. 
Women, pale and dishevelled, were moving towards 
the companion-way, staggei'ing and holding on. What 
Father Bartoli nobly calls '^ the pain and anger of the 
stomach " appeared to have made that clearance, 
wished for by every good captain, of the bad fruit with 
which emigrants always cram themselves at Genoa, 
and of the feeds they are all sworn to take at the inn 
whenever they have any money. Even those who 



i6 Qn Blue Mater, 

had not been sick were haggard and cast down ; 
looking more like convicts than emigrants. It seemed 
that the inactive and comfortless life on board ship 
had already quelled in most of them the courage and 
the hopes with which they had set out ; and that in 
the prostration of mind which follows the excitement 
of i^arting a fresh sense had arisen of all the doubts, 
the troubles, and the pangs of those last days at 
home, when they were selling their cows and their 
little bit of laud, were having sharp discussions with 
the landlord or the parish priest, or were saying their 
last sad farewells. But the worst was below in the 
great cabin, the hatchway of which was aft, near the 
pooj)-deck. For looking down one saw, in the half- 
light, bodies piled upon each other as in the ships 
that carry home the corpses of Chinese emigrants ; 
and there came up, as fi'om an underground hospital, 
a concert of wailing; and retchiuQ^ and couo^hinoj iit to 
make one think of landing at Marseilles. The only 
pleasant feature was the sight of a few bold S23irits 
who were crossing the deck from the galley with 
their pannikins in their hands, to gain a j^lace where 
they might eat in peace. Some, by dint of miracu- 
lous balancing, succeeded ; others, stumbling, fell 
headlong and scattered their broth in every direction 
amid an outburst of execrations. 

I heard with pleasure the bell that summoned us 
to breakfast, where I hoped to see a somewhat gayer 
picture. 



i8 Qn Mwc Mater, 

There were about fifty of us seated at a long table 
in the middle of a vast saloon, rich with mirrors and 
with gilding, and lighted by numerous air ports 
through which ^ve could see the horizon swaying up 
and down. While taking their seats, and for some 
moments afterward, the guests did nothing but eye 
one another ; concealino; beneath a feio^ned indiffer- 
ence that piying curiosity which we always feel about 
unknown persons with whom we are to live for some 
time in unavoidable familiarity. The sea being a 
little rouo-h, several ladies were missino^. I soon re- 
marked at the end of the table the gigantic priest, 
taller by the head than those around him ; it was 
the head of a bird of prey, small and bald, with red 
eyelids, and a neck of interminable extent. I was 
struck with his hands as they spread the napkin, 
huge, bony, with fingers like the tentacles of a devil- 
fish ; in short, an unpoetical Don Quixote. On the 
same side, and nearer me, I recognized the blonde 
lady I had noticed the evening before. She was a 
handsome woman of, say, thirty years old, her eyes 
rather too blue, her nose without character; she was 
fresh and lively, and was dressed \vith an elegance 
perhajDS a little too marked. She turned on her 
neighbors, as if she knew them all, the vague and 
smiling look of a dancer at the footlights, and I do 
not know what it was that made me quite sure she 
was the owner of those stockings that had caught 
my eye that morning. The legal proprietor of said 



Zbc (Bult of %non5. 



19 



silk was no doubt the gentlemanly quinquagenarian 
who was sittino; next her. He had a kind and tran- 
quil face, suri'ounded by a professional head of liair 




Iber e\!C5 vatbev too blue, hex nose without cbavactcr." 



and pierced for two half-closed eyes, in which there 
gleamed the look of a cleverness more apparent, pei*- 
haps, than real, but which seemed habitual. Next 



20 Qn JSlue Maten 

bim a couple of yoiuig ladies wLo a23peai'ed to be 
relatives or intimate friends. One was dressed in 
sea-green, and I was struck with ber pale and bollow 
face, in strong contrast witb ber black, sbining bair, 
wbicb was like tbe tresses of a coi'pse. She bad a 
larsre black cross about ber neck. Tbere was a droll 
little married couple, bride and bridegroom beyond a 
doubt ; very young, botb small, like two little Luc- 
cbese plaster figures. Tbey ate witb downcast eyes 
and talked witbout looking at eacb other, embar- 
rassed, and shy of the others at table. I took him 
to be twenty and her not over eighteen, and would 
have wagered that not more than a fortnight had 
passed since their appearance befoi'e the city au- 
thorities ; in short, a white nun and a theological 
student who bad found out in time that they bad 
mistaken their vocation. On one side of tbe bride- 
groom tbere sat in state a matron witb imperfectly 
dyed hair, ber bosom up to her chin, and a great face 
such as tbe caricaturists give a sulky moon. There 
were above the mouth unmistakable traces of an over- 
strong depilatory. She ate conscientiously, having 
down from those aerial sideboards that swayed above 
our beads like chandeliers, first the mustard then the 
pepper, and then the mustard again ; as if she were try- 
ing to give a tone to a worn-out stomach, or to a hoarse 
voice which she tried from time to time with a bit 
of a cough. At the head of the table was tbe cap- 
tain, a kind of Hercules, low of stature and frown- 



XTbe (3ult ot X^qowq. 



21 



ing of visage, red of hair and fiery of face. He talked 

in good Genoese to his right-hand neighbor, and in 

bad Spanish to the gentleman on his left. This was 

a tall, old, di'ied-up person with long, very white hair, 

bright deep-set 

eyes, and an air I 

about him that I ■, /•^-^^^'^c-'mT'^ 

recalled the hv *' . -'^If ''^^«| 

■ 'I','. I 



test portraits of 
the poet Ham- Wit' J'*^^::^-;, 
ei'ling. As the '" -fcwo^ 
greater part of 
the passengers 
were strangers 
to one another, 
there was but 
little conversa- 
tion, and that in 

low tones, ac- ^^ato^x^xSj 

companied by 

the jingle of the 

swinging lamps, 

and interrupted 

from time to time by the sharp slap on the table 

with which some person seized an escaping apple 

or orange. A phrase of Spanish, followed by a 

burst of laughter, caused everyone to turn toward 

the end of the cabin. " It is a party of Argentines," 

said the passenger on my left hand. As I turned 




'* IWey t him a couple of vioung la&fes wbo appeare^ 
to be relatives or frienfts." 



22 Qn mixxc Mater. 

to look at them my attention was caught by the 
handsome, manly face of my right-hand neighbor, 
whose voice I had not yet heard. A man of about 
forty, looking like an old soldier, stout of body, but 
evidently still active; hair already gray. The bold 
forehead and bloodshot eyes reminded me of Nino 
Bixio, but the lower part of the face w^as milder 
though sad, and contracted by a disdainful expres- 
sion which did violence to the gentleness of the 
mouth. I do not know what association of ideas it 
was that made me think of one of those noble Gari- 
baldian figures of the year '60 which I knew from 
the immortal pages of Cesare Abba, and I quite 
made up my mind that he had gone through that 
campaign and was a Lombard. 

While I was looking at him my left-hand neighbor 
dashed his fork upon the table, exclaiming, " It 's 
no use ; if I eat I am ruined ! " 

It was a withered little man with a face as of one 
suffering from stomach-ache, and a great black beard, 
too long for him, looking as if it were fastened on, 
like a jack-in-the-box. I asked him if he felt ill, 
and he answered with the easy fluency of an invalid 
when he is talking of his aches and his pains. 

He did not feel ill, or rather he was not exactly 
suffering from sea-sickness. His was a special trouble, 
rather moral than physical, an invincible aversion to 
the sea, a sombre angry disquietude which seized 
upon him the moment he stepped on board, and 



Ubc 6ulf of %nons. 23 

which never left him until he landed, even though 
the sea were like a lake and the sky like a mirror. 
He had crossed several times, his family being set- 
tled at Mendoza in the Argentine ; but he suffered 
at the end as at the beginning. By day he felt a 
languor and a morbid restlessness ; by night he was 
tortured with incurable insomnia and the darkest 
imaginings that can pass through the mind of man. 
His hatred of the sea rose to such a pitch that he 
would, for a week running, never look at it. If he 
came across a description of it in a book he would 
skip the passage. In fact, he declared that if he 
could reach America by land he would rather travel 
in that way a year than make this trip of three 
weeks by sea. So far down was he. A friend of 
hisy a doctoi*, had declai'ed in Jest, but he himself 
firmly believed, that this violent aversion to the sea 
arose from no other cause than a mysterious presenti- 
ment that he would be drowned in a shipwreck. 

^' Scid se leve queste idee da a te-^ta^ avvocato ! " — O 
avvocato, put that notion out of your head, — said his 
neighbor on the other side. The advocate shook his 
head and pointed with his finger to the bottom of 
the sea. 

Finding that this gentleman knew some of the 
people on board, I asked him about matters and 
things. How correctly I had judged ! M}^ right- 
hand neighbor, he told me was, in fact, a Lombard ; 
he had heard him speak Lombard with a friend on 



24 ©n Blue Mater* 

the wharf at Genoa ; and a Garibaldian no doubt, 
the commissary had told him so that morning. 
" But how did you know ? " he asked me ; and I am 
afraid I felt rather proud of my power of guessing, 
and showed it. He went on with his details. The 
family at the end of the table, father, mother, and 
four children, was a Brazilian family going to Para- 
guay. The young fellow, with the blonde mus- 
taches, sitting next the youngest Brazilian was, he 
thought, an Italian tenor singer (he of the stateroom 
opj)osite mine) going to Montevideo to sing. The 
person, speaking so loud at that moment on our side 
of the table was a kind of oi'iginal, a Piedmontese 
mill-owner ^vho, having grown rich in the Argentine, 
was returning thither for good, after a short stay in 
his own country, where, as it wouki appear, he had 
not had the triumphal reception that he expected. 
In fact, as early as last evening he had been heard to 
tell the story to a steward, and boast that Italy was 
not going to hold his bones. Here my informant 
stopped and said in a low voice, "Look at that arm." 
It was the pale young lady with the cross around 
her neck whom I had already noticed. I looked and 
almost shuddered. It seemed not an arm but a poor 
white bone fresh from the sepulchre. Then I re- 
mai'ked her eyes so dull and filmy, and with the ex- 
pression that seems to gaze at everything and see 
nothing. I remarked, too, that the Garibaldian 
resrai'ded her with lids half-closed as if to veil the 



Ubc (Bulf ot X^ons* 25 

feeling of compassion whicli she inspired even in 
him. 

The company, in short, presented to an observer 
a variety tliat was highly satisfactory. Amongst 
others I noted the strano:e bronzed face of a man of 
thirty-five ; a grave and somewhat melancholy counte- 
nance. I could not take my eyes off him for a while 
after the advocate had told me he was a Peruvian, 
for the oblong head, the large mouth, and the thin 
beard answered well to the descri[)tions we read in 
history of those mystei'ious Incas that had always 
tormented my imagination. I seemed to behold him 
clothed in red woollen, with a fillet around his head, 
and o^olden earrino^s in his ears, markius: his thousfhts 
with the many-colored strands of a knotted cord ; 
and I could almost see the gigantic golden statues of 
the imperial palace gleaming behind him, and gar- 
dens around him glittering with fruits and ilowei-s 
of gold. But it was only the proprietor of a match 
factory at Lima, talking composedly of his business 
with his opposite neighbor. 

When the fruit came on the conversation became 
somewhat more general and animated. I could hear 
the captain recounting an adventure which happened 
to him when he commanded a sailing ship, the up- 
shot of which seemed, from his gestures, to have 
been a monumental serving out, — on his part, in some 
port or other, to some raganuiffin or other who had 
failed in due respect, — of kicks and cuffs. At the foot 



26 ©n JBlue Matei\ 

of the table the Argentines often provoked loud 
LiLighter by poking fun, as it appeared, at a French 
travelling salesman, the usual bagman to be found in 
all steamers, and who answered with the impertur- 
bable coolness of an old hand, lavishing in reply 
witticisms out of the well-known repertory which all 
of his profession have at their tongues' end. While 
coffee was being served, the ship gave two or three 
rolls rather deeper than usual, and then, gazed at by 
all, there rose from the table a beautiful Argentine 
lady ; but as she w^alked off staggering and sup- 
ported by her husband, I could not verify — so to 
speak — that ^'wonderful grace of motion" which 
writers of books of travel ascribe to ladies of her 
country. But it was plain enough from the admir- 
ing curiosity of the company that she was already 
acknowledged as aesthetic lady-superior among the 
fair sex of the Galileo^ and that it would be exceed- 
ingly difficult to dethrone her while the voyage 
lasted. Soon after this all arose from the table, 
looked one another over from head to foot as on 
sitting down, and then dispersed to the poop-deck, 
to the smoking-room, to their staterooms ; ali*eady 
showing in their faces how boi-ed they wei'e at the 
prospect of the endless six houi's which lay between 
them and dinner. 

But I did not find it dull at all. One idea filled 
my mind, a I'eflection new and most delightful, un- 
known in any other condition than on board a ship 




** Iperfect fiee&om from cave." 



28 Qn Blue Wiatcv. 

at sea, — the feeling of perfect freedom from care. I 
could say, in fact : Now for twenty days I am separ- 
ated from the habitations of men, I can see none of 
my kind save those I have about me, these are for 
me the whole human race. For twenty days I am 
freed from every social tie, from every social duty ; no 
trouble can assail me from the outer world, for no 
news can reach me from anywhere. A thousand 
misfortunes may threaten me, none can reach me. 
Europe may be convulsed, I shall not know it. 
Twenty days of limitless horizon, of undisturbed 
meditation, of peace without fear, of idleness with- 
out sting of conscience. A long stretch without 
fatigue across a boundless desert; a sublime pros- 
pect all around me, and an air most pure ; strangers 
for my associates, and an unknown country for my 
goal. Prisoner in an island if you will, but an 
island that bears me where I wish to go, which glides 
along under my feet ; and, like a palpitating slice of 
my native land, sends its own thrill into my sympa- 
thizing blood. 




CHAPTER III 



ITALY ON BOAED SHIP 




HAD, moreover, as a remedy for 
dulness, a letter of introduction to 
the commissary from a friend in 
Genoa, praying that official to put 
me in the way of making such 
observations on board the Galileo 
as should suit my purpose. Before we reached Gib- 
raltar I waited on him. His quarters were on deck 
near the captain's office, in one of the long gangways 
running fore and aft, called by the officers of the 
ship Corso Roma because there was such a constant 
passing of people there. I found him in a nice white 
stateroom, adorned with photographs and full of handy 
little trifles which o^ave it a homelike air, altog-ether 
diffei'ent from the boarding-house look of our sparsely 
furnished domiciles. He was a handsome young Geno- 
ese of fair complexion, who wore with ease the simple 
uniform of the vessel ; and his grave regular features 
bespoke a power of acute observation and a fine 

29 



30 Qn Biwc Mater. 

sense of humor. He took me at once to his office 
on the other side of the Corso. Besides having 
charge of the mails, he was a kind of justice of the 
peace on board the ship ; his duty being to keep 
order and settle all disputes which might arise among 
the third-class people. 

There needed but few words to show me that I 
was to have on the voyage a new and far more ex- 
tended field of observation than I could have sup- 
posed possible. It seems that, owing to the crowded 
condition in which this multitude of emio^rants is 
forced to live, the diversity of their manners and cus- 
toms and the ao^itation of mind so natural under the 
circumstances, there arises in a day or two such a 
complication of psychological facts and questions as 
would not occur on land in a whole year among a 
number four times as great. I was not, however, to 
hope in the first few days for any proper conception 
of it all. I must wait, he said, until things were a 
little settled and arranged, until attachments and 
sympathies had been formed, until jealousies and 
quairels had arisen. I must allow time for original 
minds to acquire their little celebrity, and tlie lead- 
ing spirits to get their followers around them; the 
"belles" must have the chance to become known, 
the gossips of both sexes the opportunity to observe 
and exchange ideas, and then I should see that life 
on board would take the character and movement of 
a huge village where all the inhabitants, idle from 



•fftal^ on JBoar^ Ship. 



31 



necessity, were passing tlie day in the sti'eet and eat- 
ing all together in the o[)en square. " Imagine if you 
please,'^ he continued, " what sort of a daily chi'onicle 
all this can yield." And as he said this the com- 
missary shook his head with a slight smile which 
gave token at once of the queer scenes at 




which it was his duty to be present and the treas- 
ures of patience he would be forced to draw upon. 



32 Qn Blue Mater, 

On the table was a perfect mountain of passports, 
an absti'act of which he showed me. The Galileo 
was carrying sixteen hundred third-class passengers, 
four hundred of whom were women and children. 
This, of course, did not include the ship's company, 
whicli must have numbered nearly two hundred per- 
sons. Every place was occupied. The greater part 
of the emigrants, as is generally the case, came from 
northern Italy, and eight out of ten were from the 
country. Many Valusines, Friulans, and farmers 
from lower Lombardy and upper Valtellina ; peasants 
from Alba and Alessandria who were going to the 
Ai'gentine for the harvest ; only expecting to put by 
three hundred lire in three months, the journey being 
forty days. Many came from Val di Sesia, luany al- 
so from those lovely regions which crown our lakes, — 
so lovely that it seems strange how anyone could 
think of leaving them — weavers from Como, fami- 
lies from Intra, reapers from around Verona. From 
Ligui'ia the usual contingent, principally from the 
districts of Albenga, of Sanova and of Chiarivari ; 
divided into gangs by an agent who accompanied 
them and to whom they were bound to hand over a 
certain sum in America within a given time. Among 
these were several of those sinewy women who work 
in the Cogorno slate-quarries, and who can vie in 
muscular foi'ce with the strom^rest man. Of Tuscans 
but few. A handful of alabaster workers from 
Volterra, plaster-figure makers from Lucca, and far- 



Utal^ on :iBoarb Sbip^ 33 

mers from around Firenzuola, some of whom, as often 
happens, may have laid aside the mattock to become 
wandering musicians. There were harpers and fid- 
dlers from the Basilicata and the Abruzzo, and some 
of those famous braziers, the rino^ins^ of whose anvil 
is going to be heai'd in every quarter of the globe. 
Those from the southern provinces were principally 
shepherds and goathei'ds from the Adriatic coast, 
especially from the neighborhood of Barletta; and 
many herdsmen (cafoni) from that of Catanzaro and 
Cosenza. Then there were Neapolitan pedlers, specu- 
lators in straw work who, to get rid of the im[)ort 
duties, took their raw material to America and man- 
ufactured it there ; shoemakers and tailoi's from 
Garfagnana, pick and shovel men (sterratori) from 
the Biellese, field laborers from the island of Ustica. 
In short, hunger and courage from every province and 
of every profession ; not to speak of many starving 
creatures without pi'ofession, aiming at they knew not 
what, going to seek their fortunes with blinded eyes 
and folded hands, the feeblest and most unlucky of 
all emigrants. Of the women, the greater number 
had their families with them ; but there were not a 
few quite alone or accompanied by a friend of their 
own sex. Among these several Ligurians who were 
in search of places as cooks or waiting maids ; some 
were looking for husbands, allured by the hope that 
they would not find so much competition in the new 
world ; and there were those who were going out witk 



34 ©n JBlue Mater. 

views somewhat more extended aod more easily real- 
ized. Amongst all those Italians there were some 
Swiss, some Aastrians, and a few French Proven^ales. 
Almost all of them were boimd for the Argentine, a 
small number for ITraguay, a very few for the I'epub- 
lics of the Pacific coast. Some did not even know 
where they were going — to the American continent 
generally — when they got there they would look 
about them. There was a monk who w^as going to 
Tierra del Fuego. 

The company, in short, was of the most varied de- 
scription, and promised well. Not only a large vil- 
lage, as the commissary remarked, but a little state. 
In the third class was the people, in the second the 
burghers, and in the first the aristocracy. Captain 
and officers stood for the government, the commis- 
sary was the magistracy, and the press was repre- 
sented by the register of complaints and remarks 
which w^as kept open in the dining-saloon ; besides 
which the passengers themselves, to kill time, often 
set up a daily journal. ^'You'll hear and see all 
sorts of things," said my friend the commissary, '' and 
the comedy will grow more and more interesting 
until the very last." He prepared me meanwhile 
for the play by showing me some veiycuiious docu- 
ments, records of peasant ingenuity ; lettei's of recom- 
mendation handed by emigrants to the captain and 
to himself, and written by persons wholly imknown 
to those whom they addressed : " Signor Comandante 



•fftalp on Boarb Sbip» 35 

of the ship, I ask your good offices in favor of so and 
so, a countryman of mine, admirable fai'mer, excellent 
parent, and my very good friend, etc., etc." There 
were those who had such letters as these signed by 
Tom, and Dick, and Havvy (Tlzitgnoti),Sind addressed 
to the authoi'ities of Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. 
Fine, handsome, smiling women, too, had presented 
credentials, evidently apocryphal, from a father or 
an uncle, as an indirect way of asking favo]', and 
making it quite clear that they would not be wanting 
in gratitude. " I cordially desire," one would say, 
"to introduce my sister, who being young and alone 
among so many strangers, might be exposed to, etc., 
etc." And on the very first day he had found on 
his table a note scrawled in pencil, without signa- 
ture, a blind declaration of attachment, with a vague 
hope that Jw would from sympathy recognize her 
among all those people, — but he must not say a word 
for pity's sake, must keep the secret and pardon the 
indiscretion. " Amove, ahna dehnondo, — " '' 'T is love 
that makes tlie world go round." And it was the 
great business of these ocean voyages. Whether it 
was, said the commissary, the result of idleness 
which left too free thoughts already excited by the 
emotions of the few days previous, or whether it was 
a special psychological effect of the sea air joined to 
an inclination to tenderness engendered of solitude, 
it was, at all events, a fact that the " populace " of 
the steamer gave him more trouble on that one ac- 



2,(> ©n Blue Mater. 

count than on any other; and it would, beyond 
doubt stand as the dominant chord in the great 
symphony he was to be bearing for the next three 
weeks. ^' O, if I could only write a book ! " he con- 
cluded, smiling. 

And yet for the first few days the ark attracted 
me more than the animals. And I believe it is al- 
ways so with those who travel for the first time in 
those colossal boats that carry blood to the New 
World and brins^ back treasure to the old. At first 
the brain is confused in that labyrinth of passages, 
of corners, and of nooks ; by that jostle of sailors 
and of officers in coats of various pattern, going into 
and coming out of all kinds of furtive doors, like 
those of a prison or a public office. How can so 
much intricate structure be necessary to move and 
steer the huere vessel ! But when one beg^ins to un- 
derstand a little, it is impossible not to admire the 
perfection which human wit has reached in planning, 
fitting, and settling into one another all those little 
holes of offices, of storerooms, of sleeping-places, of 
workshops of every kind, in each of which one sees 
as he passes by some person who is writing, or sew- 
ing, or kneading, or cooking, or washing, or hammer- 
ing, crouched down, as it would seem, with hardly 
space to move, like a cricket in a hole, and yet ap- 
pearing quite at ease, as if he had been born and 
bad always lived inside there, floating between 
heaven and earth. The enormous machine that 



•fftal^ on Boarb Ship. 37 

moves all this is the nucleus ; and the bow and 
stern are like the suburbs of a kind of strono^hold 
called the midships, consisting of the second-class 
staterooms, the rooms of the officers, the engineers, 
the doctor, and the cooks ; of the bakers' and pastry 
cooks' rooms, the kitchen and the baths, the galley, 
the pantry, the linen-room, the flag-room, and the 
post-office. And this central city, traversed by two 
long side gangways, all noise and bustle, and full of 
the smell of coal, of oil, of tar, and of frying, is cov- 
ered by a huge terrace, like a hanging square, to 
which the enormous trunk of the mainmast and the 
two mighty smokestacks rising from among the boat 
davits and the ventilators, and at the far end the 
officers' bridge like an airy balcony, give a strange 
monumental aspect, which enchains the fancy as if 
it w^ere some mysterious city. This deck, occupied 
principally by the third-class passengers, commands 
the whole fore part of the vessel, a bit of Noah's 
Ark, a huge place crowded with passengers, having 
along its sides the stalls for the horses and cattle, 
the coops for pigeons and fowls, and the pens for 
the sheep and the rabbits. At the far end the steam 
washroom and the slanghter-house ; this way again 
the fresh-w^ater tanks and the deck-2)umps, the sky- 
light of the canteen, and the hatchway of the w'omen's 
cabin, covered by a strange-looking roof of thick 
glass, which serves the women for a seat. Above 
all the foremast, with its black shrouds and rigging 



38 



m JSlue Mater. 



cut clear against the sky. Beyond all the forecastle, 
covering the sailors' quarters, the icehouse, and the 
sick bay, and forming another platform running to a 
point where plenty more people are crowded in 

r"^' "'^ anion o; the huiJ^e 
blocks and the cap- 
stan and the anchor 
chains ; and more 
hatchways, and 
more ventila- 
tors, until it is 
like an outwoi'k 
of the main fort, 
from which the 
poop-deck at 
the other end 
of the ship, 
covered with 
its awning and 
^ peopled with 

ladies and gentlemen, 
looks small, confused, 
far off, and not at all 
as if it belonged to the 
same structure. Yet all 
this is only the outside 
of the mighty vessel. 
You are to imagine another woi'ld underneath, un- 
known to the passengers; endless bunkers full of 




irtal^ on Boav^ Sbip* 



39 



coal, enormous tanks of fresli water, provisions of 
every kind, as if for a besieged city ; enormous 
stores of rope, of sails, of 
blocks, of fire hose ; an 
interminable labyrinth 
of half-lighted caves 
ci'ammed full of baggage ; 
passages where one must 
stoop ; ladders that go 
down into the dark, black, 
damp recesses which no sound 
fi'om the humming crowd above 
can reach, where one would seem 
buried in the granite vaults of a 
fortress did not the trembling of 
the walls inform him that all 
around is thrillinof with tremen- 
dous life, and that the frail struc- 
ture is in motion. 

And so examininsr the Galileo 
piece by piece, and turning over 
passports with the commissary, 
I passed the first three days. 
We had noble weather in the 
Gulf of Lyons; but, reaching the 
Straits of Gibraltar on the fourth 
day, we found a thick fog that wholly concealed 
the Rock, the coast of Africa, and the shores of 
Spain, and made the passage very difiicult. Not 




40 Qn Blue Mater, 

for the reason that disturbed the quiet of raany 
women in the third class who supposed, the com- 
missary told me, that the ship had to thread her 
way through a narrow passage between the rocks, 
where she ^vould scrape on both sides and run the 
risk of being knocked to pieces like the boats that 
go into the Blue Grotto of Capri, but that because 
of the fog and the crowd of ships that meet there in 
that ocean vestibule, where two continents almost 
touch each other, there might easily occur a collision 
that would send us all to the bottom and no time to 
make our act of contrition/ We had, therefore, to 
proceed with the greatest caution. And then a won- 
derful sight was seen, at once comical and solemn, 
well worth being made a picture of, and called in 
Genoese A filffettaj — '' Fear and Trembling." The 
Galileo was moving on very slowly indeed in the 
midst of a dense fog which shut in the view a short 
distance from the ship ; the officers were all on the 
alert ; the captain on the bridge was sending down 
order after order to steer to starboard or to port, 
while the whistle sent out at every moment its note 
of alarm, — a kind of hoarse wail like the presage of 
woe. To the right, to the left, in front, behind, 
were heard hoarse ill-boding answers from invisible 
steamers, some far off, like I'oars from the lions of 
Africa, some quite near, as of steamei's on the point 

^ *' Letter or line know I never a one 

Save my neckverse at Hairibee." — Translator. 



irtalp on Boarb Sbip. 



41 



of running us down ; others weak and at intervals ; 
others ao^ain cominu^ thick and fast as if to threaten 
and entreat at once. At every sound those sixteen 
hundred passengers, on their feet and crowded to- 
gether on the deck, turned, 
everyone, towards the quar- 
ter whence it came, with 
wide eyes and suspended 
breath ; and some would 
hurry that way with fright- 
ened faces as if expecting to 
see the huge Low of the ship 
that was to run us down. 
Not a voice ^vas heard, not a 
smile was seen in all that 
multitude. Asif by instinct, 
families drew together, some 
crowded around the boats, 
others eyed askance the life- 
preservers that were hanging hei'e and there, and 
all sent glances in turn from the captain, their 
guardian angel, to the fog ahead, where death might 
be lying in wait for them. One man only on the 
poop-deck seemed to be indifferent. It was my neigh- 
bor at table, the advocate. Seated with his back to 
the water, he appeared to be reading, and I was half- 
inclined to admire his coolness ; but I was cpiickly 
undeceived, for the book trembled in his grasp as did 
never glass of liquor in the hand of a hopeless drunk- 




42 On JSlue Mater* 

ard. This lugubrious concert of signals lasted more 
than an hour, amidst a deathlike silence on board the 
ship, and the slow, slow progress of the steamer, as if 
she were stealing through a hostile fleet, — an hour 
that seemed to last forever. At last only far distant 
sounds were heard from time to time, and the cap- 
tain came down from the bridge, wiping his forehead 
with his handkerchief, the signal of our deliverance. 
We were passing Cape Spartel, and the Galileo 
moved out upon the broad Atlantic accompanied by 
a school of porpoises, which was greeted by the emi- 
grants with a hurricane of yells and whistles. 

The fog lifted almost at once. On the left ap- 
peared the coast of Africa, a chain of far-off moun- 
tains as clear as crystal, and the Atlantic I'ocked ns 
on its long, smooth billows, blue and fringed with 
silver like carpets shaken by myriads of hands un- 
seen, one after the other, far as the eye could reach; 
and the Galileo seemed to di'aw over them, as she 
foamed onward, a long, endless train of whitest lace. 
The new sea was in no wise different from the one 
we had left, and yet everyone seemed to toss his 
head as if the spirit were more free and the eye had 
greater range. We breathed the air with deeper in- 
spiration, and with a new sense of pleasure, as if 
it brought to us already the spicy breath of the 
great South American forests to which our thoughts 
were flying across those six thousand miles. The 
sky was deepest blue, the dim and horned moon 



irtal^ on Boavb Sblp* 



43 



hung low above the horizon, ahnost lost in the tender 
aznre of the sky. It seemed as \l that ocean to which 
we had all been looking forward with such anxiety 
were saying to us, " Come on ! I am mighty, but I 
fight fair ! " 





**1[ am migbt^.but H fi^bt fair! 



CHAPTER IV 



FORWARD AND AFT 




WO days later everything could 
be regarded as in order in tlie 
forward part of tlie ship, and I 
began mj observations. When I 
went on the bridge, a little after 



ei2:ht in the mornincr the hour 
for breakfast, the fore-deck looked like a country fair 
or a gypsy encampment with the tents down. Each 
party of emigrants had taken its place and passed 
the greater part of the day there. These places 
were, according to traditional custom, respected by 
everybody. Wherever one could sit without block- 
ing the passage, in all the nooks and corners made 
by coils of rope or bales of hay or merchandise piled 
against the side of the ship, there nestled, like so 
many kittens, a little knot of kinsfolk or acquaint- 
ances with their stools and their cushions and their 
rugs. Some had crawled so completely out of sight 
that one might pass the place ten times and not know 

44 



IforwarD anD UtU 



45 



they were there ; for these poor creatures fit into 
every hollow like watei*. Some of the einiiz-rants 
were still dipping their biscuit in their black coffee, 
the tin pot on their knees; some werewashino; their 
crockery at the deck tubs, or were serving out the 
fresh water to their ranchos in so-called bidons, sliaped 
like truncated cones and painted red or green. Others, 
again, were crouched up against the bulwarks in the 




2>i*e0Sing tbe cbilocen. 



posture of peasants well accustomed to lie upon the 
ground ; or were pacing up and down with their 



46 On Blue Mater. 

hands in their pockets, as if on the open square of 
their native villages. The women, meanwhile, with 
their hair hanging about their shoulders, were mak- 
ing their toilettes before twenty-centime looking- 
glasses, or dressing the children ; passing soap, towels, 
brushes, from one to the othei', or mending clothes, 
or washing handkerchiefs in a spoonful or two of 
water ; all busy, but plainly hampered by their nar- 
row limits and the lack of a hundred things they 
needed. Through the dense throng there moved the 
long blue bonnets of the herdsmen (cafoni), the green 
corsets of the Calabrese women, the wide felt hats of 
the north Italian peasant. There were seen the caps 
of peasant women from the mountains, red bonnets 
from the Papal States {italianelli)^ coronets of pins 
worn by the countrywomen of Brianza; white heads 
of old men ; wild black shocks of hair, and an amaz- 
ing variety of faces, wearied and sad or laughing or 
astonished ; while many a dark and sinister look 
gave reason to believe that this emigration carried 
out of the country the fruitful germs of many a 
crime. 

But the sea being smooth, the air pure and fresh, 
the greater part were in good spirits. And it was 
to be remarked that the excitement of departure, in 
which all thoughts had been absorbed, once over, 
immortal womanhood had resumed its undying sway 
even here. And that the more because, being scarce, 
it commanded here, as in America, a higher price. 



iForvvart) an^ Htt 47 

Very few of the men were looking out over the sea. 
The greater number were sci'utinizing the women 
passengers. The young fellows astride of the bul- 
wark, and one leg hanging outboard, their hats on 
the backs of their heads, took on like bold mariners, 
talking loud and laughing so as to attract attention ; 
nearly all of them looking at the hatchway of the 
women's cabin where were assembled, as on a kind of 
stage, many young women with nicely dressed hair, 
with ribbons and white dresses and brig^ht-colored 
kerchiefs neatly put on ; the enterprising portion, it 
would seem, of the ladies of the third class. Among 
these was conspicuous a rather pi'etty young woman, 
a peasant of Capracotta, with sweet, regular features, 
a countenance like a Madonna (ill-washed) charm- 
ingly set off by a neck scarf which she wore crossed 
on her bosom, all roses and pinks which looked 
iiamingly real to the eye. And I marked two girls, 
one a brunette, the other with red hair, two bold 
pi'etty faces, dressed with a certain town-bred co- 
quetry. They talked with great animation, giving 
from time to time a shrill laugh, and looking hard at 
one or at another, evidently discussing their fellow- 
passengers and reviewing the figures of fun among 
the " emigration people." The commissary, who 
came by as I was studying them, said they were 
Lombards, travelling alone, and calling themselves 
singers. They were two little devils, he said, and 
were likely to give him a great deal of trouble on 



48 ©n Mixc Mater* 

the voyage. And as I did not know just what kind 
of trouble was meant, he proceeded to set forth that 
one of the greatest plagues of life on board ship 
among all those emigrants was the jealousy of the 
married women. A teri'ible business! The honest 
women with infants in their arms were fit to kill 
these impudent adventurers who, taking advantage 
of all that confusion, were trying to bewitch their idle 
husbands; and so furious quarrels arose in which he 
had to do the moderator. '* Ah ! you '11 hear more 
later on ! " There were about a dozen of them this 
time as if they had got together on purpose to plague 
him. And then he showed me another girl, a 
Bolognese, a heavy-artillery kind of woman (donna 
caniione) sitting behind the other two with her head 
high, dressed in black, a face like a lioness, dark, not 
ugly, but, — Lord save us ! She had a haughty co- 
quetry of her own, the whim it would seem of stand- 
ing pre-eminent, and of being longed for on account 
of an ostentation of high-bred contempt for every- 
body be they who they might, — of an excessive 
delicacy which would be soiled by a breath. And 
she threatened everybody, boasting of a relative in 
Montevideo who was in journalism, and who struck 
teri'or into the c^overnment. On the first evening 
she had come to the commissary to demand justice 
because a peasant passing near had disturbed a 
leathern pouch which she wore over her shoulder. 
And on being asked once why she was going to 



3Forwar^ anb Btt 49 

America, she had answered loftily, "To get a little 
air ! " 

So here was one who was pretending to be out of 
her sphere ; but there were those who were really so, 
and the commissary looking about him for a moment 
pointed out to me some families and some individuals 
in corners as it were and keeping as far as might be 
apart from the crowd. These, to judge from their 
air and their clothes, I'agged Vjut of superior make 
and matei'ial, had evidently been forced to embark 
for America throuo-h some sudden reverse of fortune 
which had brought them down from competency to 
the streets, w^ithout even money enough to take a 
second-class ticket. There was, among others, a 
married couple with a little ten-year-old girl, who 
stood apart near the cattle-pen with the uneasy air 
of people who do not venture to sit down ; both about 
forty years old, feeble, and of most woe-begone aspect. 
They were shopkeepers. The woman, tall and thin, 
with red eyes, had seemingly just recovered from ill- 
ness, and had passed the whole of the first day in 
the cabin, weeping over her little girl and not eating 
a morsel. " Yes," said the commissary, " there is 
wretchedness everywhere, but it seems worse at sea." 

Meanwhile, looking down and right under the 
bridge, I discovered one of the most beautiful faces 
I had ever seen by land or sea, in the flesh, or in 
painting, or in sculpture, from the first day that I be- 
gan to go about the world. The commissary told 



50 ©n JBlue Mater. 

me she was a Genoese. She was seated on a little 
stool beside an elderly man who seemed to be her 
father ; and she was washing the face of a little fel- 
low before her who was no doubt her brothei'. She 
was a tall, blonde girl, with an oval face of the most 
angelic regularity and purity of outline, eyes large 
and clear, skin most fair and delicate ; the body per- 
fect, except that the hands were a little too long. 
She was dressed in a fluttering white jacket and a 
blue skirt which cluno; around limbs that seemed of 
marble. Her dress, though perfectly clean showed 
that she w^as poor; but her air was the air of a lady, 
mingled, however, with a simple and ingenuous grace 
of movement which accorded ^vell enough with her 
lowly station. She was like a ten-years child that 
had grown to that stature in a day or two. Many of 
the passengers were standing about looking at her, 
and others turned to give a glance as they passed. 
But for the whole time that we were regarding her 
she never raised her eyes or gave the slightest sign 
of consciousness that she was being admired ; and her 
face preserved a tranquillity, I might almost say a 
transparency, which rendered any suspicion that all 
this was put on a thing out of the question. So dif- 
ferent was she from her surroundings that she ap- 
peared quite alone in the midst of a solitude, although 
people were pressing upon her from every side. 
How did this dainty miracle get there ? And there 
was evidently fame of her all over the ship, for the 



IForwarb anC) Hft, 51 

next thing we saw was the cook of the third class 
looking out of his own window and regarding her 
with the air of an habitual admirer. This personage 
with his imposing white cap, a bluff red face, and an 
amazing stateliness, seemed to know that he was for 
the emigrants the most important person in the ship, 
— I'evered, dreaded, paid court to like an emperor. 
"She too," said the commissary, shaking his head, 
"she too will, without intending it, give me no 
little annoyance." And he predicted a troublesome 
voyage. 

But though there was a good deal to make one 
smile, the spectacle on the whole was one to wring 
the heart. No doubt, in that large number, there 
were many who could have got along honestly in 
their own country, and who emigrated only to try 
and rise out of a mediocrity with which they would 
have done well to be content ; and many others who, 
leaving behind them fraudulent debt and ruined 
reputation, were going to America, not to work, but 
to see if there were not there a better chance than in 
Italy for idleness and rascality. But the greater 
part, it must be allowed, were forced by hunger to 
emigrate, after having struggled vainly and for many 
yeai's in the clutch of want. There were those jour- 
neymen laborers from around Vercelli, who, having 
wife and children, and half-killing themselves with 
work, — when they can get it to do, — hardly earn 
five hundred lire per year; and there were peasants 



52 ©n Blue Mater* 

from around Mantua, who, in the cold season, pass 
over the Po to gather black bulbs and roots, which 
they boil and eat, not so much to live as to keep 
from dying before the winter is over; and there 
were rice gatherers from lower Lombard y, who, in 
the slimy water that is poisoning them, sweat for 
hours under a scorching sun and, with fever in their 
veins, earn a lira a day that they may have a little 
polenta and mouldy bread and rancid pork to eat. 
Then there were peasants from around Pa via, who 
mortgage their labor to get clothes and implements, 
and, not able to work enough to pay the debt, renew 
the obligation, each year under harder conditions, 
bringing themselves at last to starving and hopeless 
slavery, from which there is no escape but death or 
flio^ht. And there were Calabrese, who live on a 
kind of bread made of the wild vetch, something 
like a paste of sawdust and mud ; and in bad years 
eat the grass and weeds of the field, and devour the 
raw tops of the wild carrot, like cattle. And there 
were those plowmen of the Basilicata, who walk five 
or six miles to their work every day, carrying their 
implements on their shoulders, who sleep with the 
asses and the hogs on the bare ground, in hideous 
hovels without any chimney, with no candle but a 
bit of resinous wood ; and who never taste meat 
from one year's end to another unless one of their 
animals happens to die. And there were many of 
those unhappy eaters oi panrozzo and acqua-sale from 



fforwarO an& Hft. 53 

Apulia, who, witli the half of their daily bread and 
one hundred and fifty lire per year, have to maintain 
their families in the city far away from them, while 
they in the country, where they are killing them- 
selves with work, sleep on bags of straw in niches 
dug in the walls of a cabin, where the rain drops 
down and the wind draws through. And, finally, 
there was a good number out of those many millions 
of small proprietors who, brought down by a system 
of taxation wliolly wtiexamjyled in tlie world to a con- 
dition worse than that of their laborers, and living 
in huts which many of these would shun with horror, 
are so wretched that '' they could not live in a healthy 
way even if compelled to by the la\v." All these 
were emigrating from no spirit of adventure. To be 
sure of this one had but to mark how many there 
were in the throno;; with stout, lai'o^e-boned bodies 
from which privation had worn the flesh ; how many 
whose brave, haggard faces declared how long they 
had fought and bled before quitting the field of bat- 
tle. Useless to try and bid down the compassion 
they awaken by raising the old cry of the outsider 
that the tillers of the Italian soil are feeble and 
slothful — an accusation long ago refuted by these 
very foreigners, who proclaim the solemn truth that 
in the south, as in the north, these laborers ])our 
out their sweat upon the land to the extent of possibil- 
ity y a truth proved, moreover, by the hundreds of 
countries that call for their labor and prefer it. 



54 ©n Blue Maten 

They deserved profound and sincere compassion; 
and the more when one remembered how many of 
them^ no doubt, had with them I'uinous contracts 
drawn by forestallers of the market, who scent de- 
spair in their huts, and who buy it up ; how many 
of them, too long ill-fed and broken with toil, bore 
in their bodies the seeds of disease which must be 
fatal to them in the New World. And it was use- 
less to recur to the remote and complex causes of 
that misery, ^' before which," as one minister re- 
marked, "we are as sorrowful as we are powerless," 
to the greater and greater impoverishment of the 
soil, to cultivation uesrlected on account of the revo- 
lution, to imposts increased by political necessity, to 
the heritage of the past, to foreign competition, to 
malaria. In spite of myself those words of Gior- 
dani would be in my memory like a refrain : ''Our 
country will be blessed so soon as it shall remember 
that the peasants, too, are men." I could not but 
allow that human wickedness and selfishness was 
greatly to blame in this matter. So many indolent 
gentlemen for whom life in the country is but a care- 
less sojourn of a few days, and the hard lot of the 
toiling classes nothing but the conventional com- 
plaint of humanitarian Utopians ; so many farmers 
without discretion or conscience ; so many heartless, 
lawless usurers ; so many middlemen and traders 
who must make money no matter how, foregoing 
nothing, trampling every consideration under foot; 



fforwar^ an^ XHft 55 

ferocious despisers of the instruQieiits they make use 
of, whose fortunes rise from an unwearied course of 
sordid opjDression, petty larcenies, and small deceits, 
from crumbs of bread, from centesimi wrung on 
every side for thirty years out of poor creatures who 
have not enough to eat. And then I thought of the 
thousands of others who, stuffing their ears with 
cotton, as it were, rub their hands and hum a tune. 
And it seemed to me that there is something worse 
than profiting by the misery we despise, and that is, 
denying its existence while it is wailing and howling 
at our doors. 

I should have liked to go down among these people 
and talk with some of them, but thought it better, on 
the whole, to wait for a day when the crowd should 
be less. To get rid of uncomfortable thoughts I 
went to pass an hour on the so-called piazzetta or 
little square, a part of the deck on the port side of 
the ship between the midship-deck and the poop. 
It had been given the name of the piazzetta because, 
as the doors of the saloon, the smoking-room, and the 
pantry opened upon it, there was there, of necessity, a 
constant traffic of people ; and being, moreover, shel- 
tered from the trade-winds which swept the poop- 
deck above, the ladies congregated there to read and 
do their embroidery work. The statei'ooms, too, on 
one side, with their green window-blinds did give it 
the look of a theatrical piazzetta, and the covered 
passage that ended there was like a public street. 



56 ©n Blue Matei\ 

Here was where we read the daily bulletins of the 
course and the distance made, with the latitude and 
longitude, all posted up on a slate hanging at the 
door of the saloon ; and here the officers usually came 
to take the sun at noon, and here were retailed the 
first bits of news in the daily chronicle of our voyage. 
It was a nook where one smoked a cis^ar with calm 
contentment, as if in front of the cafe ; and there was 
a kind of sense of being on shore and enjoying city 
life. Now and then there came a little dash of spray 
that sprinkled the books and embroidery of the 
ladies, who would hastily make their escape, but 
soon come back ao;ain. And it was here durino; the 
first few days that the greater part of the passengers 
had made acquaintance. 

When I got there that morning, there introduced 
himself with attractive ease a passenger whom I had 
not before noticed, and who was to be my most 
agreeable associate from that time until the end of the 
voyage. It was a Turinese agent of a banking-house 
in Genoa. He went to the Argentine nearly every 
year, and was one of those men whom one gets to 
know thoroughly in an hour's time. He had the 
look of a comic actor, was well dressed, white hair 
and black mustaches, a face so serious that it made 
one laugh, eyes like a schoolboy's, a brain full of 
notions, an inexhaustible good-humor, and a ready 
flow of talk, slightly euphuistical but without affect- 
ation, tormented by a gossipy curiosity, thinking 



iForwar^ anb Htt. 57 

of nothing but the people about him ; as indefatig- 
able and sharp as an old detective, prying into and 
finding out all about othei' persons' affairs, and excess- 
ively skilful at making fun out of them for his own 
benefit and that of the company, but without ever 
being suspected by anybody. He knew the most 
amazing things about several passengers with whom 
he had made the voyage, and after ten minutes' talk 
began familiarly to ask me if I knew this gentleman 
or that lady. But I could not listen to him just 
then, because my attention was attracted to another 
personage, — the type of a curious set of people whom 
I saw now for the first time. 

It was the mill-owner, who was I'unning down Italy 
as he lounged in the middle of a group of passengers, 
and gloried in his lately acquired corporosity as if it 
were a mark of gentility. He was dressed like a 
well-to-do farm steward ; had a huge gold ring on his 
right hand, a snaky eye, a petulant nose, and a con- 
ceited mouth. From his face and his talk he seemed 
to be one of those old emigrants who, having made 
their fortune without getting any education, think, 
on returning to their own country, that they will have 
but to show their well-filled purses and hold forth 
before the apothecary's shop in a mixture of lies and 
bragging about all soi'ts of far-off things, to be elected 
councillors and made syndics, and to mount on the 
shoulders of their fellow-townsmen, who will of 
course not dare to say a word because they have not 



58 On mnc Maten 

stirred from home. This one cei'tainly must have had 
a sharp awakening; and his scorched self-love must 
have pained him cruelly under all his show of rude 
joviality. Three months, he said, were enough to show 
him that his native air would not do for him any more. 
After twenty years he expected to find a ti'ansfoima- 
tion there, — some progress. He had instead found 
the old ideas, the old prejudices, the same sordid life 
and accursed greed. A hundred dogs around one 
bone, w^hen there was a bone ; and no enterprise in 
business ; everything moving on leaden feet ; a thou- 
sand perplexities ; all misers, rotten, suspicious ; an 
entire want of caballerosidad. So saying, he sent 
glances at the Italians who were near by, as if I'ather 
enjoying the chance of wounding their national 
pride. But the best was to listen to his vocabu- 
lary. It was the iii'st sample I had come across of 
the strange jargon spoken by our lower classes after 
many years' sojourn in the Argentine, where, by min- 
gling with the people of the country and with their 
fellow-citizens from various parts of Italy, almost all 
of them lose their own dialect and get a little Italian, 
and then confound Italian with their own dialect, 
putting vernacular terminations upon Spanish radi- 
cals, and vice versa, translating literally from each 
language phrases which in translation change their 
meaning or lose it altogether, and occasionally jump- 
ine: half a dozen times in the course of one sentence 
from one language to the other like so many maniacs. 



Amazed, I heard bim say, si precisa molta plata, for 
'' ci vuol molto daiiaro," — much money is needed ; 
gnastar capitally for '' spender ca2:»itali," — spend prin- 
cipal ; son salito con un carigo di trigo^ for '^ son partito 
con un carico di grano," — I set out with a cargo of 
grain. And in this horrible jargon he went on at- 
tacking the government, the behind-the-age (atrasadd) 
government, the beggarly people {inendigos)^ the 
Chamber of Deputies, and even the works of art, 
remarking that as he passed through Milan he had 
found the cathedral much smaller than he remem- 
bered it. He glorified the beauty of the American 
plains, using a broad, clumsy gesture like a tipsy 
landscape paintei*. But he always came back to Italy 
with a sort of refrain, no doubt picked out of the 
leading article in some provincial newspaper. '' Me- 
diaeval, you know, mediaeval." 

The bank agent, who was listening at the same 
time and laughing in his face, had had experience of 
that style of patriot, and told me that when such 
persons were in America they took the other side, or 
rather they abused everything, glorying in their 
own distant native land, comjjared to which they 
regarded as uncivilized, ignorant, and repulsive the 
land in which they had found I'efuge and in which 
they had grown rich. But he cut this talk short off 
to tell me that he had found a most delightful origi- 
nal among the crew, an old hunchbacked sailor who 
was set to keep order in the women's cabin. This 



6o Qn Blue Mater, 

was an exceedingly delicate matter which required 
in the employe not only the guaranty of very ma- 
ture age indeed, but also the absence of every 
aesthetic bodily quality which could possibly touch 
the female heart. This hoavy hunchbacked dwarf, 
who had to separate the two sexes at nightfall and see 
that no woman came out from the cabin during the 
night, was a queer mixture of the buffoon and the 
philosopher, who kept droning out all sorts of say- 
ings against women, the torments of his life, with a 
kind of pulpit solemnity, and sometimes with a turn 
of expression so intricate that one could not under- 
stand at all what he wished to say. " You must 
talk with him ; you will be greatly amused. And 
that other one," he went on, " have you marked 
him ? " And he pointed out the handsome, well- 
pomaded stew^ard of the first class, wdio went by, 
tray in hand, casting languid looks upon the ladies. 
This was a kind of marine Ruy Bias who looked 
high, and tried in everyway to have it understood 
that the lowliness of his social condition on board 
was alleviated by mysterious and miraculous success 
amono; the fair sex. Meanwhile he was sultan to 
the two stewardesses, a mellow Genoese and a fresh 
Venetian, each fit to tear the other's heart out for 
jealousy, and who, with hands on hips and caps 
awry, quarrelled noisily and coarsely in the coi'i'idors 
of a morning while the ladies were ringing for them. 
At that moment a passenger went by, — the Genoese 



ffot wai^ an^ Htt 61 

who sat on the captain's right at table, — a dumpy, 
good-natured little man, fifty years old or so, with 
but one eye, and a beard like a scrubbing-brush. In 
passing us, he made the agent a sign which I did not 
understand, and then went on deck. I asked what 
that sign should mean. " It means," said the agent, 
"that there is maccaroni with gravy to-day." So he 
sketched me the portrait of this gentleman. He was 
a well-to-do business man in Buenos Ayres, one of 
those many unhappy creatures who, though perfectly 
well on board ship, can neither talk, nor read, nor 
think, and are bored with a boredom that is un- 
imaginable, torturing, overwhelming, mortal. This 
gentleman, for a little relief, had gone into gastron- 
omy, for which he had a turn. He had established 
relations with the cook; he was the first to know in 
the morning what there was for dinner, and eagerly 
carried the news about. He was in and out of the 
kitchen twenty times a day, saw to the plucking of 
the fowls, chatted with the scullions, peeped into the 
baking-ovens, had talks with the pastry-cook and 
the canteen man forward, went down into the store- 
room and drank a dozen glasses of vermouth to 
hasten on the dinner hour. He conversed but little, 
and that always about gormandizing ; and when 
not thus occupied, passed hours in his berth, his 
hands under his head, his eyes wide open, yawning 
grievous yawns as if hypnotized, or like a lion in a 
show; one yawn right after another, fit to make one 



62 ©n JBlue Mater. 

believe (if the idea of some people or other, I do not 
know which, be true, that at every yawn there issues 
from the man's mouth the soul of one of his an- 
cestoi's) that he had long ago breathed out the soul 
of father x\dam. 

^' Do you know any more ? " I asked. " Why not ? " 
{Y comonoo? Pure Argentine, in sing-song tone. 
All Italians take it up.) But this time, as the person 
spoken of was near by, he lowered his voice and told 
me in my ear to look to the left in a corner of the 
piazzetta. Among the ladies there was one of forty 
years or so, with large piercing eyes, rather sallow, 
elegantly dressed ; a strange face, which at a little 
distance, when it smiled and showed the beautiful 
white teeth, seemed good and lovely, and most pleas- 
ing ; but on drawing nearer there seemed to come out, 
hard lines, evil little wrinkles. The mouth, too, 
bitter with envy and disappointed ambition, I'evealed 
a constant habit of unfeeling slander. Beside her 
was a dried-up young girl who might have been 
about fifteen years old ; a washed-out blonde, still in 
short dresses, with a meaningless face bent over her 
embroidery. The lady was skimming a book, but 
would glance sharply up at every word or step that 
she heard near her. Mother and daughter, the agent 
said. He had made the voyage with them the year 
before in the Fulmine. The mother had been takino^ 
the daughter to Germany to master the pianoforte ; 
both of Spanish descent, but born in Italy and 



settled in the Argentine. The mother had an arrowy 
tongue fit to raise a tumult among the passengers, 
and was so envious about dress that every new 
toilette that appeared on board was like a knife thrust 
into her body. "And what do you think of the 
daughter ? " — '' Nothing at all — an ill-developed 
schoolgii'l that might be playing with her dolls." — 
" Never made a greater mistake in your life, — beg- 
ging your pardon," cried the agent, and he took me 
over to the other side of the piazzetta so as to speak 
more freely. That dried-up little thing that no one 
noticed was a real psychiatric case worthy the atten- 
tion of the alienist. The year before in the J^ul- 
mine, one of the officers of the ship, a handsome 
young fellow, a friend of his, used to chat now and 
then with the mother, but probably never, during 
the whole voyage, had exchanged twenty words with 
'' that ugly little (ctcqua cheta) still-watei's," who re- 
garded him with an eye of the most tranquil indif- 
ference. And yet beneath all that there had been 
burning a kind of love that never seems to break out 
except on board ship in the silence of the cabin and 
in the solitude of the ocean, where soul sometimes 
seems to grapple to soul with the fury of the sinking 
sailor as he grasps a floating plank. As soon as they 
landed at Genoa, the lady and the daughter set out 
for Germany, and the young officer received next day 
a letter of eight pages, "full of a passion so furious, 
such phrases, such red-hot phrases you know — cries 



64 On Blue Mater, 

of passion fit to make a man shudder,— a brutal tu at 
every line, cataracts of insensate adjectives, words 
that wei*e sobs, kisses, bites — a language incredible, 
unspeakable — at thirteen years old ! And in midst 
of this lava-flow, blunders in grammar and spelling; 
and between two leaves, some haii*." Then, looking 
hard at me, " Only think — Some hair ! The Lord 
knows where her wits were. And mark this ! A 
letter giving no address and so without object — 
nothing but the ungovernable outbreak of soul and 
body tortui'ed by twenty days of silence and enforced 
hypocrisy." I turned to look at the girl and could 
not help saying, ^' It is impossible." But the agent 
made a movement as if I had denied the light of the 
sun. It was quite true. ^'And so — ?" *' A record 
of Imiman nature. — That 's all." 

As he said this the Garibaldian came by from 
forward. He passed near me and I asked him, 
almost involuntarily, from a kind of fellow-feel- 
ing, '^Have you been among the emigrants?" He 
seemed surprised that I should address him, and 
nodded, yes — coming to a stand, but half-turned 
away like a man that means to talk but little. 
The agent, who no doubt perceived in this gentle- 
man an instinctive antipathy for men of his stamp, 
moved off. 

I asked once more, " Have you seen those poor 
peasants ? " 

"The peasant," he said, looking at the sea, "is 



fforwarO anc> Htt. 65 

an embryo biirghei*." ^ I did not at once catch his 
idea. 

"The only merit they have," he went on, without 
looking at me, ''is theii* not trying to put on that mask 
of patriotic and humanitarian rhetoric. Otherwise 
the usual egoism of domesticated animals. Their 
stomachs, their pockets. Not even the idea of elevat- 
ing their own class. Each would like to see the others 
worse off so only he might get on better himself. If 
the Austrians came back and made them rich they 
would be for the Austrians." Then, after a pause, 
"I wish them joy." 

" And yet," I observed, " when they are in Amer- 
ica they remember and love their native country." 

He leaned over the bulwark towards the sea ; then 
answered, "Their native land, yes; not their country." 
{La terra, 11 on J a pair ia?) 

" I do not agree with you," I said. 

He shrugged his shoulders. Then without preface, 
and in the tone of one who means to be rid, once for 
all, of an importunate person, rather than to confide in 
him, he spoke his mind in a few quick, dry words. He 
did not even mourn for his country after all. She 
had fallen too far short of the ideal for which he had 
fought. An Italy of declaimers and plotters infested 
with old-time court-intrigue, dropsical with vanity, 
void of every great ideal, beloved by none, feared by 
none ; like an abandoned woman, now caressed, now 

^ Borghise is not accurately translatable into English. 

5 



66 ©n mwc Mater» 

buffetted, by one and by another ; strong in nothing 
but the patience of a beast of burden. High and 
low, nothing to be seen but universal rottenness. A 
policy that licks the hand of the most powerful, who- 
ever he may be ; a scepticism tormented by secret 
terror of the priest ; a philanthropy inspired not by 
generous individual sentiment, but by timid class 
interest. And no honor, not even kingly honor. 
Millions of monarchists, incapable of defending their 
own banner in time of need, and ready to grovel on 
their faces before the Phrygian cap so soon as they 
see it reared aloft. A furious eagerness in all to 
reach, not glory but fortune; the education of youth 
directed to this end alone ; every family a business 
firm, without any scruple, and ready to coin false 
money so only they can get their children on in the 
world ; the sisters following the brothers, losing day 
by day from the education and life of woman all 
spirit of poetry and of breeding. And while popu- 
lar instruction, a mere pretence, was planting the 
seeds of nothing but pride and envy, misery was in- 
creasing and crime was flourishing. Could those 
men who gave their blood for the redemption of 
Italy come back to life, one half of them would blow 
their brains out. 

So saying he turned away. 

"I do not agree with you," I said. " We our- 
selves are the cause of the disillusioning that we 
have suffered ; for we imagined that the liberation, 



fforwart) auC) Utt. 67 

the imificatioD, of Italy would bring about a com- 
plete moral regeneration , would do away, as by 
miracle, with crime and suffering. We must not 
judge the present state of things by an ideal standard 
to whicli one nation is not much nearer than another. 
We must judge it by the past, tlie horrible and dis- 
graceful past. To have come out of that, no matter 
how, is comfort enough." 

He made no answer. 

I asked if he were going to the Argentine, and 
if he had any relatives there. He was going to the 
Argentine, and lie had no relatives there. 

I then observed, for the first time, that he had be- 
hind his ear a deep scar as from the wound of a pistol- 
ball. 

I asked if he had made the campaign of sixty-six, 
not supposing from his age that he could have been 
in that of sixty. 

But he had been through the last also, at sixteen 
years of age. 

I looked at him attentively and asked if he had 
ever been hit. 

♦Never, — he said, quite naturally. 

But turning unexpectedly at that instant, and 
taking me in the act of looking behind his ear, he 
gave me a quick, searching glance, while a flush rose 
to his cheek, and a flash of anger shot from his eye. 
He frowned and turned once more to look at the 
horizon with a sharp movement that said most 



6S ©n Bine Mater. 

plainly, '' Let me alone." But that look had revealed 
to me a secret of his life, a terrible moment to which 
he must have been brought by long and bitter suffer- 
ing, and after a great change had been wrought in a 
mind no doubt once firm and full of fertile force, 
like his fine soldierly, athletic body. And all enthu- 
siasm, all affection, perhaps, was dead in him ; but 
the unbelief into which he had fallen, was not ig- 
noble scepticism; for he suffered, and he still loved 
the good in which, alas ! he could no longer place 
any hope. I saw, moreover, that there could never 
be anything in common between him and me, — or 
anyone else for that matter; so I left him alone 
there, looking at the sea. 

And I went over to the other side of the deck to 
look at it myself, for since the day we sailed it had 
never been as now, — all bright, frolicking waves 
which rose, lucent and tender, with a hundred soft- 
ening shades of crystal blue and green, of velvet 
and of satin, crowned by silvery tufts and plumes, 
by crisp white crests and a thousand little rainbows 
hung amid a mist of drops ; and ever and anon a 
high white spout of water through it all, like a cr\^ 
of joy from that crowd that was dancing in the sun 
beneath the kiss of the trade-wind. The swell would 
roll up to the level of the deck and then sink out of 
sight, like a threat that turns into a jest, and then I'ise 
again, as if angry at not being able to say it, giving 
place to other billows which kept running up and 



fforwar^ ant) UtU 69 

looking at tis, and th^n going out of sight with their 
secret, like the rest. And I could have I'einained 
there for hours to watch that ceaseless forming and 
dissolving of snowy mountain chains and hollow 
valleys, of solitary and fantastic tracts, thrown to- 
gethei', dispersed, collected, scattered again, like tlie 
surface of a world at the will of a god. But all this 
turmoil was near us only; around us and afar the 
sea was moveless, laughing Idue, picked out with 
whitest spots that seemed the sails of countless fleets 
in company with us. 




CHAPTER V 



LADIES AND GENTLEMEN 




A.VING at hand a living gazette 
in the bank agent, I was not long 
in finding out, almost involun- 
tarily, all about many of the 
first-class passengers. The next 
morning the agent came to sit 
beside me in place of the advocate, who had not left 
his room. Every day this gentleman made half a 
dozen new acquaintances. The morning before, he 
had got into conversation with the young couple 
that occupied the stateroom next to his, and finding 
that they were timid and embarrassed before other 
people, he thought he would torment them a little. 
Hardly, accordingly, had he taken his seat when he 
asked the young people sitting opposite whether they 
had rested well. ^^ Quite well, thank you," they an- 
swered with an uneasy glance. ^' And yet," said the 
other, with the most natural air in the world, but 
looking hard at both, '' and yet the sea was, I thought, 

70 



tables anb (Bentlemen, 71 

rather rough last night." The rest smiled ; the young 
couple blushed and began to examine the knives and 
forks with much attention, while the agent talked 
quietly and pleasantly on without appearing to notice; 
doing, the while, great honor to the cookery of the 
Galileo. The tall priest was a Neapolitan who had 
been settled in the Argentine for about thirty years. 
He was returning thither after a short trip to Italy, 
made, he said (though there were doubts about it), 
to see the Pope. The agent had heard his story one 
evening. He had gone to the Argentine with what 
he stood in ; had been parish priest of rising farm 
colonies in several States of the Republic, in regions 
almost uninhabited, where he carried the viaticum on 
horseback, galloping all night long with the host 
about his neck and a revolver in his belt. He had, 
he said, been several times attacked and had defended 
himself with his weapon ; and it had happened, more- 
over, that travellers, meeting him by moonlight, had 
taken to flight, scared by his great black shadow. It 
was clear that he had had as much care for his own 
body as for other men's souls, and had been in the 
habit of accepting a fancy price for the marriage and 
burial services. At any rate he boasted of having got 
together a comfortable maintenance, and was always 
discoursing oi pesos and pataco7ies with a disagreeable 
flapping about of his hands, like a weathercock, and 
with a Basso porto accent which years of speaking 
Spanish had not been able to obliterate. The agent 



72 On JBlue Maten 

knew but little of the tenor. He had, he believed, 
a good voice enough ; it made one think of a scalded 
cat, — but no matter, — and he was, as usual, a very 
peacock for conceit. From the first day he had gone 
around among the passengers exhibiting a tattered 
newspaper with a These-Our-Actors article and the 
words underlined, "This artist has the key to the 
human heart." — " Made one think of his hearers' 
house-door keys," said the agent, but that might 
be an error. Believed the tenor was getting up 
a vocal and instrumental concert for the evening 
when we crossed the Line. He knew more about 
the blonde lady with the black-silk stockings, — 
Italian-Swiss, — wife of an Italian professor of some- 
thing or other at Montevideo. Had made the voy- 
age from America to Genoa with her two years 
previously. An excellent creature, as good as gold 
(huona come il pane\ with the brain of a sparrow, 
— as beautiful and as ignorant as a dahlia, — a great 
thirty-year-old girl whom the solitary condition of 
single male passengers inspired with a bold and lov- 
ing pity. During ten years, taking every now and 
then a run over to her native country, she had been, 
with her childish good-humor, the life of six or eight 
different ships, and had consoled with her sweet pity 
as many sets of passengers, so that she enjoyed a 
kind of jolly celebrity with the Society di Navigazi- 
one. In a trip of two years previous, amongst 
others, she had had a droll adventure with an Argen- 



XaMes ant) (Bentlemen, 73 

tine, a deputy, who, it did so happen, was on board 
with us in the Galileo. This gentleman, a very good- 
humored, amiable person, but exceedingly precise 
and orderly in his habits, occupied a stateroom on 
deck. So, while he was amusing himself in the 
saloon or pacing the fore-deck, this lady and a friend 
of hers would go and throw everything about in his 
room, and he would storm and rage over having to 
set it to rights. This had gone on well enough 
several times. But one day when the sweet Swiss 
had made the venture alone, the gentleman had un- 
expectedly come back, had flown into a passion and 
had shut the lady up in the room until she should 
have restored order. But this, being no light task, 
lasted some time ; and, a sudden squall coming up, 
the lady remained shut in there for several hours, 
her alarmed husband meanwhile looking and calling 
out for her along the corridors, demanding that a 
boat should be lowered to pick her up, and wholly 
unconscious of the derisive pity of those about him. 
But no further harm came of it. On this voyage, 
however, the lady and gentleman made no sign of 
ever having met before. I turned to look at the 
deputy, where he sat at the lower end of the table. 
A dark man, between thirty-eight and forty, strong 
profile, eye-glasses, — the face of a man who would 
not allow his home to be invaded with impunity. 
As for the professor-husband, the agent said he was 
a fine man, devoted to the study of nautical mechan- 



74 



Qn mm Maten 



ics, although he had a face rather literary than scien- 
tliic, and he passed the day in grave meditation 
before the engine, the wheel, the capstan; at every 

fresh order that was 
given on board requir- 
ing the most minute 
explanation from the 
officers. This he carried 
forward, for the pleasure 
of giving to the people 
there morsels of the 
bread of science, while 
those on the poop-deck 
enjoyed his. But I was 
just then looking at the 
next neisrhbor of the 
Argentine, a pale, blond 
man with a pair of whis- 
kers like weeping-wil- 
lows in hail*, such as are 
seen in the hair-dress- 
ers' windows, and who 
rolled his eyes around 
upon the rest of us like a suspicious fish, but spoke 
to no one. I asked the aoeut if he knew who he 

o 

was. "O, he is worth your while." Thought to be 
a thief escaping. People were talking of it on board 
the ship. Frenchman. One of the passengers read- 
ing the Figaro^ which had reached Genoa on the day 




Ubc pl•ofe8SOl•sbusball^." 



XaMes anb Gentlemen* 75 

of sailing, thought he perceived a striking resem- 
blance between this strange, suspicious face and cer- 
tain traits which the Paris journal ascribed to the 
cashier of a bank in Lyons who had disappeared 
three days before, leaving his safe an exhausted re- 
ceiver. The agent said he had made his investiga- 
tions; at any rate he hoped to iind out all about it on 
our arrival, when the police should come on board. 
He had not asked any cpiestions about the married 
cou[)le seated opposite this last gentleman. They 
were my neighbors below, they of the hrusJi. The 
lady forty or so, with a pair of cold eyes and a per- 
petual forced smile on her thin lips. Not ugly, but 
one of those whose mind has spoiled the face ; such as 
at first glance inspire repugnance for the ill they work 
to others, and then compassion for what they must 
themselves suffer. The husband had the air of a 
retired major of cavalry ; seemed a man of firm mind, 
but mastered by a nature stronger than his, and worn 
out by dull, unchanging trouble. They never spoke 
to one another ; they never were together except at 
table ; they behaved like strangers ; but my neigh- 
bor noticed that she darted terrible side-o^lances at 
him when she thought he was looking at any other 
woman, — the jealousy of pride had survived affection. 
An ill-assorted couple, in short ; like two convicts in 
a chain-gang between whom there existed a mysteri- 
ous and deadly aversion. But the one my neighbor 
knew best was the captain, a capital seaman, rough 



76 ®n Blue Mater. 

and irascible, master of an amazingly rich vocabulary 
of Genoese oaths and abuse, which he heaped upon 
the humbler portion of the crew, — a perfect litany 
of reprimand delivered with a most irresistible cres- 
cendo of effect ; proud, too, of the vigor of his fists, 
which he had used pretty freely during his twenty 
honored years of command. He had a fixed idea, 
and that was an absolute severity in the matter of 
morals. Porcaie a hordo no ne veuggio, "I won't 
have any n — well, nonsense on board," was his 
word. He wished to have the ship as virtuous as a 
monastery, and he thought he could carry his point. 
Sometimes his lessons were rather emphatic. On a 
previous voyage, having found out that two persons 
of opposite sex had retired to a deck stateroom, he 
had caused a good stout batten to be nailed across 
the door, and had left them there until the pair, 
driven by hunger, had pounded furiously, and at 
last had come out coram populo, inezi inorti da-a 
vergeugna^ — half -dead with shame. But he had like 
to have fallen ill with rage on the last trip, for he 
brought from Buenos Ayres to Genoa a complete 
company of singers and a corps de ballet of one hun- 
dred and twenty legs ; and there were not in the ship 
battens enough or nails enough to keep them in order. 
In fact, all his threatening eloquence in the language 
of sci had not prevented the Galileo from becoming 
something of a pandemonium. Under ordinary con- 
ditions, however, w^hen he was not borne down by 



XaMes anb (Gentlemen. 77 

the numbers and the boldness of the enemy, he was 
so rigorous as not to allow even a mild flirtation. 
He boasted, too, that he kept people in order with- 
out infringing the laws of courtesy, that he could 
say anything without offence. When a passenger 
followed any lady about too much he took him aside 
and said, respectfully : '' I beg your pardon, but you 
are getting somewhat nauseous (angosciosd). I won't 
have any nonsense on board here." In other respects 
a ]'ight good fellow. The majestic old person who 
sat beside him, the Hamerling, was a Chilean — a real 
personage. Called on board, the " Mountain boi'er," 
because he had made the little run over from his own 
country (thirty-five days at sea) to buy tunnelling 
machines in England, and had stayed in Europe, from 
time of landing to time of leaving, exactly one fort- 
night. Grave, as the Chileans always are, and Avith 
high-bred ways, he had chatted a little the first few 
days with the Argentines ; but as these had vexed 
him in a dispute about the eternal question, the south- 
ern boundary of the two republics, he had drawn 
away from them and spoke with no one but the cap- 
tain and the priest. My neighbor knew" no more of 
him just then. But he was looking up a beardless, 
over-dressed young Tuscan who sat at table over 
against the professor's wife, on whom he kept his 
eyes, so absorbed that sometimes his fork itself 
stopped short on the way to his mouth, as if it were 
struck with admiration. He seemed a kind of half- 



78 On Bine Mater* 

starved Don Giovanni who was taking his first long 
flight from home ; and he had, none the less, an 
amazing boldness under that guise of suckmg p?'emier 
amoureux^ for while he was prancing around the 
Swiss hidy, w^hom he seemed to have known on land, 
he was all the while makino^ little excursions for- 
ward, where he snuffed the air like a young colt, 
especially at evening when he ran the I'isk of having 
the jacket that he changed so often dusted for him 
by the emigrants. So saying, the agent rolled an 
orange almost into the plate of the young bride- 
groom, and then suddenly put out his hand, saying, 
^' Would you mind ? " Unhappy bridegroom ! At 
that instant, profiting by the little confusion usual 
at the end of every course, he had dropped his right 
hand under the table while the bride dropped her 
left. At the unexpected address the two hands 
came briskly to the surface — separate; but it was 
too late, a chaste blush had already betrayed the 
secret. " They are too happy," said the agent in my 
ear, ''I must embitter their lives for them a little." 
He then rose, and when I went on deck half an 
hour later, I found him talking with a priest in the 
second class. But the second class was nearly empty 
and offered but little food to his curiosity. There 
were two old priests who were always reading their 
breviaries; there was an old lady, travelling alone, 
and wearing glasses, who turned over from moi'ning 
till night some old illustrated news[)apers ; and there 



XaMes an^ Gentlemen, 



79 



was a numerous family all in mourning who made a 
dark, sorrowful group amidships, quite still for hours 
together, save that the two smallest boys would now 
and then race across the bridge to the poop-deck, 
where the lady with the black cross would sadly 
caress them with her small wasted hands. 




CHAPTEE VI 



LOVES AND GEIEVANCES 




SPOUT of water, received full in 
the face as I opened my port for 
a little air at dawn next morning 
kept me in my berth the whole 
day with a wet bandage around 
ray head, to meditate at leisure 
upon the brutality of Father Ocean. The blow was 
so well planted that my head was dashed against the 
other side of the room, and I lay there in a pool, 
stunned, and with my mouth full of salt water. 

Owing to this accident it was not until the ninth 
day that I could make my visit to the emigrants. 
Ruy Bias, as, with dignified air, he handed the coffee, 
announced that the weather was fine. But it was 
not his decoction that aroused me so much as the 
warblings of the tenor and the mewlings of the 
Brazilian baby, accompanied on the pianoforte by 
(no doubt) that magnificent edition of humanity — 
the young person of the letter. In the midst of these 

80 



%ovc5 nnb (3rievance$, 81 

noises my ear was pained by an excited discussion 
in the next stateroom, occupied by the lady of the 
hmsh and her husband. 'T was wondrous pitiful. I 
caught no more than a woi'd here and there, but the 
ring and the intonation of those two voices, in un- 
regarding quarrel, and, urged by a sentiment colder 
but more deadly than anger, bespoke a habit of dis- 
puting about nothing, an involuntary impulse, a 
sudden swelling up of evil thoughts and wishes 
which they must give vent to or be suffocated. The 
dialogue was crossed from time to time by a sardonic 
laugh or a half- uttered word repeated now by one 
now by the other, in the same tone ; a refrain, as it 
were, of abuse ; and by, '' Oh, hush ! " rather hissed 
out than spoken. The wTjrds seemed all torn to 
pieces between the teeth so that it was impossible to 
distino:uish the voice of the man from that of the 
woman. It was a quai-rel in undertone, with poison- 
ous blasts for weapons ; more painful, a hundred 
times over, to listen to than if it had been yells and 
blows. What a dreadful thing was that conjugal 
hatred shut up in a dungeon out on the wide ocean ; 
two creatures tied together only to tear each other, 
and carrying from one side of the world to the other 
the hell that was tormenting them. Then they 
stopped short ; and a moment after, as I came out 
they did so likewise, perfectly well dressed, and to 
all appearance unmoved ; but when they reached the 
stairway that leads to the deck they turned one to 

6 



82 



Qn Blue Mater* 



the right the other to the left without a glance. In 
the corridor I came upon the young Tuscan, a good 
deal got up and standing sentinel. Then passing 

the Swiss lady's room I 
llioULiht I saw the flash 
a blue eye at the 
softly opening 
door. Next I 
ran against the 
agent, who re- 
marked, apropos 
of nothing, "Do 
you know, that 
young couple an- 
noys me ? " He 
had heard over- 
night the bride say- 
ing her prayers, 
and then — a variety of things. Amongst others, at 
all sorts of hours they would study the Spanish 
grammar, conjugating the verbs in undertone, and 
stopping every now and then to kiss each othei*. 
Only last evening he had heard a pluperfect that he 
could not stand. He was going to change his room. 
And he had accounts to give me of some new peo- 
ple ; but, begging him to keep these until later on, 
I went forward to see the emigrants and get into 
talk with them. 

It was cleaning time, the forecastle was crowded, 




' (tonjugating tbe verbs fn an un^cvtone." 



%ovc5 anb (3riev>ance5« 83 

the weather fine ; ev^erything seemed favorable. But 
I soon found it was not so easy a matter as I had 
supposed. Taking the greatest care to touch no foot, 
I passed among the people that were sitting about, 
and I soon heard behind me, " Make way for the 
signori " ; and, turning round, encountered the glance 
of a peasant who fixed upon me an eye which boldly 
confirmed the sense of his sneerins; exclamation. 
Farthei' on I put out my hand to caress a child ; but 
the mother bluntly drew the little creature to her 
without looking at me. I was inexpressibly pained. 
I had not thought of the state of mind that many of 
these people must naturally be in, all troubled as they 
were with memories of the life they had left ; a life so 
intolerable that to cut it short they were willing to 
quit their country. Nor, again, of the resentment 
they must feel against that varied crowd of proprietors 
and extortioners, of overseers, of lawyers, of middle- 
men, of government officials ; all known to them as the 
signori, the gentle folk, the quality, and all supposed 
to be leagued together against them ; all looked up- 
on as the authors of their misery. For them I was 
a representative of that class ; and I had forgotten, 
moreover, that to persons in their state of mind a 
denizen of that little privileged world, the first cabin, 
image of the country which they were forced to leave, 
must be especially odious ; as if he w^ere a vampire 
following them across the sea and sucking their blood 
until they reached America. So that it was quite 



84 On Blue Mater, 

impossible that they should understand the really 
kind and respectful feelings which actuated me ; and 
it would have been imprudent to enter point-blank 
into talk with any of them. Had I done so they 
would have regarded my motive as one of cruel curi- 
osity ; a desire to hear of woes and horrors : they 
would have taken me for some schemer, some med- 
dlino; contractor who had come out in the Galileo to 
engage laborers on the sly, where he would not be 
troubled with competition. These reflections over- 
threw at once all my hopes. 

So I tossed away my cigar and began walking 
about, looking at the rigging and the spars as if I 
were thinking of nothing but the ship, yet all the 
while listening closely. Many settled groups had 
already been made up, as always happens among emi- 
grants from the same province or of the same pro- 
fession. The greater part were peasants, and there 
was no difficulty in perceiving what was the princi- 
pal theme of discourse : the miserable condition of 
the agricultural class in Italy, the too great compe- 
tition among the laborers, all turning to the advant- 
age of the proprietors and tenant farmers — low wages 
— dear food — excessive taxes — seasons with no work 
— bad years — greedy employers — no hope of better- 
ing their condition. The talk for the most part took 
the form of narrative : tales of misery, rascality, in- 
justice. In one group, where a kind of bitter Joyous- 
ness appeared to prevail, they were laughing at the 



%ovc5 anb Grievances* 85 

rage which would devour the signori when they 
found themselves without any laborers, forced to 
double wages or to sell their lands for a bit of bread. 
'^ When we are all gone," said one, 'Hhey will perish of 
hunger too ! " And another, '' Before ten years are 
over the revolution will break out." But those who 
said the most dangerous things spoke low after cast- 
ing a look around, because a great many of them, as 
I afterwards learned, were afraid the government 
might have on board some secret police service. 
There were groups of Calabrese peasants with their 
hooded cloaks, their sandals, and their leg-bands, 
(zanipitti) ; but few of them spoke. In other parties 
the talk was of the sea and of America ; and it was 
easy to preceive who had been thei'e, from the high 
confident tone in which sucli persons held forth and 
the attention with which the others listened ; for it 
is amazing what power vanity has over many of these 
poor creatures even in their distress ; and what a 
burning desire they feel to become known, to make 
for themselves a pedestal even in so poor a throng, in 
order to show how superior they are to the wretched- 
ness to which they are reduced and by which they 
are surrounded. 

Those who seemed to talk the most were the 
Ligurians, and one could almost know them by the 
confident, almost defiant, way they had with them ; 
an air which comes from a commercial and naval 
spirit and a general sense of fifty years' successful 



S6 ©n Blue Mater, 

emigration by those of tlieir race. They had, or 
gave themselves, the air of being quite at home and 
at ease on board ship. The mountaineers, on the 
contrary, were almost all stolid and taciturn, as if 
dazed by the sight of that flat, boundless surface, 
so different from tlieir mountains, all varied with 
broken plains, and from their narrow cosy little 
valleys. Some of these people were standing up- 
right like wooden automatons, some Avere crouched 
like wild beasts. There were, however, among them 
a few of those bold, light-hearted spirits whom 
novelty and the throng of men excite like ^\ ine. 
Tliese bustled about from party to party addressing 
their little remarks to everyone, and laughing over 
the sea as if they were to find heaps of gold ready 
for them on their arrival. And from the many 
couples of men, and women too, who were sitting 
talking face to face, as if smoking or working at 
their own house doors, it w^as clear that not a few 
of those permanent friendships were being formed 
which, cultivated in America as circumstances per- 
mit, are always the most dear; bearing for life, as 
they do, the impress of that early need of sympathy 
and mutual encouragement to face a mysterious future 
which gave them birth. Women stood about with 
their infants in their arms as at the corners of the 
streets. Near the caboose, or canteen of the third 
class, I marked the Lombard singers chatting and 
laughing with theatrical ease in the midst of a group 




'♦IClomen stoo^ about witb tbcir infants in tbcir aims as at 
tbe corners of tbc streets." 



88 ©n Blue Mater* 

of young Switzers. These all wore, probably with 
some political idea, caps of red cloth, and made 
good with a pantomine, perhaps a little too ex- 
pressive, their lack of the needed phrases. I met 
the handsome Bolognese walking all alone, with her 
prima-donna stride, the cynosure of many glances ; 
her inseparable satchel at her side, and looking down 
at every moment with a grimace of disgust lest she 
should soil her shoes. The deck was, in fact, strewn 
with bits of pajDer, with apple parings, crumbs of 
biscuit, all sorts of things, and looked as if a 
regiment had been bivouacking there. In general, 
too, the faces and the clothes of the soldiers agreed 
well enough with the condition of the place. Many 
countenances indeed had on them the dirt of sailing 
day. But I did not blame them so much when 
I remembered that while German emigrants at 
Bremen, before going on board, have good shelter and 
a bath to refresh them from their land travel, ours 
at Grenoa slee]3 on the sidewalks. 

I moved on towards the water-tanks. The fair 
Genoese was there in her white jacket and her blue 
petticoat, between her father and her little brother, 
clean and fresh as a flower, and busily sewing. But 
the crowd of her admirers had grown thicker. She 
had around her at different distances perhaps a 
dozen passengers who never took their eyes oif her ; 
jesting and whispering in one another's ears with a 
kind of grin and a look in their eyes which left but 



%ovc5 auD Orievances. 



89 



little doubt about the character of their admiration. 
Others came up, stood on tiptoe to look at her, and 
then went away. She was famous already, and was 
beyond all doubt to be the great success of the 
voyage in the society of the fore-deck. But celebrity 
had not changed her ; no, not in tlie least. From 
time to time she 
raised those 



quiet blue eyes, j 
as if she had 
trees around 
her instead of 
men, and then 
dropped them 
once more upon 
her work, un- 
consciously, as 
she bent her 
head, display- 
ing to all those 
eager looks her 
Avhite neck and 
the maofniiicent 
folds of her golden 
hair. Ah, poor 
third-class kitchen ! I looked 
at its window and saw the red 
face of the cook, his eyes fixed, his forehead WTinkled. 
Beyond all doubt there was a passion flaming up 




1bis CYJCs fire^, bis forebea& 
\viinfcIeJ>," 



90 ®n JSlue Mater. 

among tlie saucepans too. The public health was in 
danger. As I looked at him I saw his glance as it 
turned from the girl take a fierce expression, and fol- 
lowing it my eye fell upon a figure in the circle of 
admirers that fixed my attention in a new quarter. 
It was a youth less than twenty years old, beardless 
and starved-looking ; his poor Avi'etched shoulders 
like coat-pegs ; a sort of cross, it appeared, between 
the village schoolmaster and the bookkeeper; the 
kind of person that goes to America '^to get 
something to do." Seated on a barrel-head, he kept 
his look fastened on the girl with a passion so 
ardent and so humble that it might have extorted a 
glance of compassion from a woman of marble. He 
seemed to be alone on board, and carried around his 
body a belt of yellow leather which probably con- 
tained his whole peculium. I looked at him for 
some time, and all the while those eyes were moist 
and moveless, with a faint sad smile in them as of 
pity for himself; the whole body quite still, like one 
who is content to adore, who expects nothing, hopes 
nothing, and is there for life. All this time the 
girl did not seem aware of his presence. He 
languished there all alone like a Stylites on his 
column ; and the warmth of his poor unregarded 
flame was lost in space like the smoke from the 
Galileo's funnels. 

I next repaired to the forecastle which was full of 
people. As I went up I heard alongside of me, 



%ovc5 auD Grievances* 91 

"Yes, they make this their theatre ! " — Gu\ i^egnen 
clil al teater. This vegnen was meant for me, of 
course. I was received here worse than in the other 
place. I met with furious glances and tui-ned backs. 
Nor this alone. Snh terris tonuisse putes. It oc- 
curred to me, and I was not wrong, that the place 
was a kind of Mountain where all the emigrants with 
revolutionary ideas, all those who had to go into a 
corner to hold dangerous talk, came together; and 
where all the protests against bad food, and all the 
plottings against rules and regulations were to have 
origin. There were bold dark faces; and the general 
air of the men was that of the bravo in repose. They 
seemed to be all single men, or such as had left their 
wives behind them after two or three years of mar- 
riage (these last a long list) either because they are 
driven to emigrate by the needs of an increasing 
family or because, having tried married life and 
found it a bore, they wished to get out of it this way. 
In one group I found the tall old man who had 
shaken his fist at his country the evening of our de- 
parture ; the very type of a dried-up adventurer, with 
fiery eyes, with cords in his neck that looked ready 
to burst the skin, and wearing a green jacket that 
seemed to have belonged to some actor. His head 
was bare, his gray locks free. He spoke loudly with 
a Tuscan accent, and gesticulated with raised fore- 
finger. I heard as I walked about the word pagnot- 
tisti, and caught, fiying, a furious look that made me 



92 



®n Blue Mater. 



think it would be as well to move on. Near the 
capstan a little fellow was playing on his pipe, but 
the wind carried the sound away and no one took 
any heed. Some were seated on the 
deck, at cards. Right forward, on 
the cut-w^ater, stood a queer 
figure of a mountebank with a 
long, bony, olive-colored face 
lighted up by two large green 
eyes, his black hair falling over 
his shoulders, his bare arms 
folded on his breast, and havinsf 
tattooed on one of them the 
initials. A, S., with a cross. 
Thus upright and gloomy in 
his loneliness, now borne 
aloft, now sinking with the 
movement of the vessel as if 
dancing in the air, he seemed 
the personified idea of all the 
misery brought together on 
that deck ; the living symbol 
of the vao^abond and uncer- 
tain destiny of every one around. There was but 
one woman up there, an old woman seated on a 
timber-head, beside her husband, likewise old ; both 
with arms crossed upon their knees and their heads 
upon their arms, so that their faces were not seen ; 
nothing but the thin gray hair; and their necks^ 




mo one tooh an^ bee^.' 



%ovc5 anD Grte\>ances. 93 

whose wrinkles showed them to be past seventy, 
were stretched out in an attitude of utter aban- 
donment and mortal weariness. What were they 
going to do in America? Perhaps join their chil- 
dren. I saw nothing on board more pitiful than 
these two poor, old, broken-down creatures, almost 
in the grasp of death already, and yet going out 
to a land where their futui'e must be a bitter 
struggle. I bent over them. They were asleep. A 
short distance off, upright against the bulwark, 
cowled and solitary, stood the friar who was going 
to Terra del Fuego, a face as of wax, with eyes va- 
cant, expressionless. 

Coming down from the forecastle I met the sur- 
geon, a Neapolitan, the very image of Giovanni 
Nicotera, but with different eyes and a different air; 
vacant, stolid, — a not unusual case of physical like- 
ness between persons of opposite natures. I went 
with him to the sick bay, a large oblong apartment 
lighted from above, with two tiers of bunks round 
about. There was a child here ill of the measles, 
flushed and feverish, a love of a boy with bright 
curly hair. Standing near him was a peasant wo- 
man from the neighborhood of Naples, a fine, hand- 
some woman, who, as soon as she saw the doctor, 
began to weep, choking her sobs with her hands. 
The doctor examined the child and then said, in a 
reproving tone: "The illness must run its course; 
there is nothing to fear. Put that foolish notion out 



94 On JBlue Mater* 

of your head." He then explained to me that some 
silly women had upset her by saying that if anything 
happened to the child it would be thrown over- 
board into the sea ; and she was in despair. Then 
turning another way and speaking loudly he asked, 
" And how is it with you ? " Presently I saw 
thrust out of a low berth the head of a sickly 
old man who, in spite of the doctor, persisted in 
putting forth his legs and sitting on the edge of the 
bunk. He had his clothes on. He answered in a 
thin voice, "Pretty well" (JVo?i c'e tanto rtiale). The 
doctor examined him and shook his head. The man 
was suffering from a bad pleurisy, and had taken to 
his bed the day after we left. He was a peasant 
from Pinerola, all alone, and was going to the Argen- 
tine to Join his son. I asked him in what part of 
the Argentine his son was. He did not know. His 
younger son had gone thither three years before, 
leaving him at home with the other brother, and 
this one had lately died. Then the younger son had 
written him to come out and had sent a huono for 
the trip, but without giving a precise address, the 
fact being that he worked on the roads, and was 
constantly changing quartei's. But he had told his 
father how he might be found. So saying the poor 
old man thrust his thin hand into a breast pocket and 
pulled out a handful of tattered greasy papers which 
he began to run over with trembling fingers. Just 
then a sudden roll of the ship threw his poor bald 



%ovcs auD (Grievances. 95 

head bard against the upper berth. He passed his 
hand over the place to see if there were auy blood, 
and then turned once more to his papers. There 
were torn envelopes, papers with figures, perhaps his 
last accounts with his padrone, a receipt, and a little 
almanac. At last he picked out a crumpled half- 
sheet on which was written in large characters, but 
blotted with ink and almost illegible, the name of a 
village in the province of Buenos Ayres in which, at 
such a number of such and such a street, he would 
find shelter with a Piedmontese family. Hither 
would come within the month apatriottay a comrade 
of his son, who would take him to his Carlo. With 
such a direction as this, old, sick, and ignorant, he had 
set out for America. " I greatly fear," said the doc- 
tor, as we went out, '^ that he has set out too late.'' 

And then I must go with him to see the " man- 
ger." In a little corner in the forward part of the 
ship, between a turkey coop and a huge hogshead 
shoved up against the side, about large enough to 
hold a sack of coals, a family of ^ve persons had 
made their lair, passing the day jammed in against 
each other and ao:ainst the walls so as to look as if 
they had only gone in there for fun. It was a family 
of peasants from the neighborhood of Mestre. Hus- 
band and wife, both still young, — she enceinte, — two 
boys — twins — six years old, and a girl of about nine, 
with her head bandaged. She was in front, knitting, 
and the blond urchins were imprisoned between the 



96 



®n Blue Matei% 



knees of the father, who was smoking, with his back 
against the side of the ship, and holding out his arm 
to the wife, who was mending his sleeve. Poor but 
clean, with faces that wore a certain air of serene 




**/lDent)fng bfs sleeve." 

resignation. As the doctor approached, the man 
rose up smiling, and said the " wench " was better ; 
she had got a cut from falling down the cabin stairs 
a day or two before. '^ And how about the kitchen ? " 
the doctor asked. The peasant with several others 
went to the kitchen every day to peel potatoes and 
shell beans for the second cooks, who paid them with 
a glass or so of wine. '' All right," he answered, "at 



Xoves ant) (3i1evances. 97 

all events we get a drop of wine. But that ca])0 
cogo (head cook) is a queer fellow." On being 
asked, the peasant told his story. An uncle had left 
him a bit of land, enough to live on or nearly, if he 
worked like two. Ma co no glie xe fortuna, — " When 
a man has no luck, everything goes wrong its own 
way." There was a little mortgage on the land, and 
then one hundred and ten lire of taxes ; two bad 
years to begin with ; in short he had worked himself 
nearly to death for five years and had done no good. 
And what if the wife did woi'k fit to kill herself just 
like a man, there were fi\ki mouths and only two pair 
of hands. To be wearing out his life in this way, to 
be always in debt, to eat polenta and nothing but 
polenta, and to have his childi'en starve day by day 
before his eyes, — this could not go on. Then the girl 
fell ill for a long time, and at last one of his cows was 
killed by lightning. That settled it. He had sold 
everything, and was going to try whether he could 
not screw out some kind of a livino* in America. 
Good- will and courage were not lacking. Ma co no 
glie xe for tuna. Then he eagerly went on, " Salude 
putei^ die vien la jparonoina^'' — Make your bow, chil- 
dren, here comes the young lady. And greatly was 
I surprised to see, coming along through the throngs 
on deck, the lady with the black cross, in her dress 
of sea green, leaning on the arm of her companion, 
paler and more feeble than I had ever seen her. She 
approached the family, asked about the girl in Ven- 



98 ©n Blue Mater* 

etian dialect, and put her hand on the heads of the 
twins; then taking out a little parcel, probably of 
sweetmeats or fi'uit, she gave it to them with a cer- 
tain worn invalid grace that was infinitely touching. 
Meanwhile the doctor took me aside and told me she 
was also from Mestre, that she had recognized that 
family of peasants on the day of sailing as they were 
going on board. She was the daughter of an engin- 
eer, a widower, who had been for two years in 
charge of certain railway work in the interior of 
Uraguay, and she was going out with an aunt, who 
was only one year older than herself, to see her father 
"once more." I was in the act of asking what the 
last phrase meant, when the young lady coughed, 
and I had no need to finish the sentence. It hap- 
pened, too, that the doctor pointed out to me a 
woman sitting near by all alone, and looking at the 
family with glassy, almost despairing eyes, in which 
there appeared a glimmer of envy and the undying 
memory of a lost affection. She, too, was Venetian, 
and was going to join her brother at Rosario, be- 
cause, two months before, her husband had been 
stabbed in a quarrel. 

And all this misery is Italian, I thought as I re- 
turned to the after-deck. And every ship that goes 
out of Genoa is full of it, and they are going out of 
Naples and Messina and Venice and Marseilles every 
week throughout the year, and so have been doing 
these ten years. And these Galileo emigrants, as far 



%ovcB an^ (3rtevances* 99 

as the voyage went, at all events, might well be 
called fortunate in comparison with many who in 
previous years were, from lack of room in the hold, 
littered down on deck like beasts, living there for 
weeks, drenched with water and suffering deadly 
cold ; 01' with others who had nearly perished of 
hunger and thirst in ships half-provisioned, or almost 
died of poisonous fish and putrid w^ater, — and many 
did die. And I thought of many others, again, who, 
shipped off for America by rascally agents, had been 
treacherously landed in a port of Europe, where they 
were forced to beg their bread ; or, who, having paid 
for their passage in a steamer, had been put on board 
a sailing vessel and kept six months at sea ; or, who, 
supposing they were to go to the Plata River, wdiere 
friends and relatives awaited them, had been put 
ashore on the coast of Brazil to be decimated by the 
tropical heat and the yellow fever. And thinking 
of all this foul crime and of the thousands of my 
fellows-citizens who in foreign cities keep body and 
soul together by the most degrading drudgery, and 
of the bands of starving street performei's whom we 
send out to the four winds, and of the hideous ti'affic 
in children, and of many other things, I bitterly en- 
vied those who can go about the world and not find 
at every turn those of their own blood in wretched- 
ness and sorrow. 

But to sweeten all this bitterness, a kind Provi- 
dence had sent on board two French commercial 



loo ©n Blue Maten 

travellers. One was a Parisian, a good fellow enougli 
though somewhat loose in talk, but, alas ! with a face 
on him which I seemed to have seen before in one of 
Darwin's illustrated works at the head of a chapter 
on apes. The other I have spoken of already, a 
Marsigliese, fifty years old, with a Patagonian bust 
and short legs, one of which was crooked and trail- 
ing. He had a face like a bloated Napoleon I., 
and he was so grave that the nonsensical things he 
continually said seemed doubly ridiculous. He pre- 
tended to be commercial correspondent of the Jour- 
nal des Debats, though no one believed it, and he 
bragged a good deal about literature, citing on all 
occasions one and the same book, which was his 
gospel, and of which he had most certainly read 
nothing but the title, the Dictionary of Littre, " un 
ouvrage qui restera dans les sieclesy Moreover, he 
boasted of knowing Italy thoroughly, and spoke 
Italian in a way to frighten the sharks. But the 
funniest part of it all was that, having enjoyed in 
Italy, as well appeared from his talk, nothing but 
street-corner conquests, he harangued, ex catliedra^ 
about the fair sex, making a hundred nice distinc- 
tions, a la Stendhal, between the ladies of one great 
Italian city and another, as if he had made study of 
the flower of our aristocracy in the capacity of 
French ambassador. And then he had a way of ar- 
guing about all sorts of things, a way common 
enough among the lower French bourgeois class, by 



%ovcs an^ Grievances. loi 

subterfuges and set phi*ases, of which the following 
plea may be taken as a fair sample, bi'ought up by 
him against one of the Argentines, who declared that 
beer was hurtful. '' J\xi assiste a Tenterrement de 
Men des gens qui n^en Imvaient pas^ But his forte 
was gallant adventures, which he I'ecounted half- 
boastfully, half-comically, with actor's gesticulation, 
standing up, and always making a wave with his 
fingers and a pirouette on one heel, to come round 
ao:ain and face his hearers with ^' Et voila T'' like a 
juggler asking for ap^^lause. 

That very morning he and his colleague, who sat 
over ao:ainst him at table, enlivened us all with a 
discussion, begun I do not know how, about the cost 
of a respectable dinner at one of the so-called unar- 
chands de vin. After a few words, the attention of 
the company having piqued the vanity of both, the 
Parisian allowed himself to remark in a sympathizing 
tone that his interlocutor did not know Paris. The 
Marsigliese flew out like a shot, ''J^ai fait vingt- 
cinq voyages a Paris, monsieur ! " — " Et moi^"^ an- 
swered the other, rising in the midst of a general 
silence, — "^'^ VliahiteP 

But the look, the accent, and the gesture were so 
solemn as to provoke a loud laugh wliich almost 
drowned the rejoinder of the enraged Marsigliese : 
" Yous prenez la chose siir itn ton . . . N'ous 
nous moquonspas mal de Paris . . . Thiers qui 
a sauve deux fois la France^ . 



I02 On Blue Mater^ 

But the other was so happy in the triumph of his 
moije Vliabite that he said no more, but turned to his 
neighbors with some words, among which I caught 
'-'-.. . Thiers, une vilaine figure de policMnelle.'''' 

On which we all rose from table, still laughing. 

This day, the weather being most charming, all the 
beau "iiionde was on deck a couple of hours before 
dinner except the Argentines, who at that time were 
in the habit of having a kind of national luncheon 
upon their delicious preserved meats, a provision 
of which they had on board wdth them. The deck 
looked like the terrace of a vast bathing establish- 
ment. Some of the passengers were lolling on the 
benches, turning over the leaves of Charpentier's yel- 
low literature ; many were promenading two and two. 
The old Chilean walked up and down with the Nea- 
politan priest, who was shaking his long flesh-hooks 
in the air as if to catch bank-notes flying, and every 
time that he passed near me I heard some of his 
phrases : "1^ creo que con un capital de docientos mil 
pataconse. . . . Vea Usted la vendida de las cedulas 
hipotecarias provinciales. ..." Beyond, and near 
the wheel the white robes of the blonde lady were 
seen. She had a blue ribbon in her hair and was 
leaning over the bulwark beside the beardless young 
Tuscan and it was plain that they wei'e talking of 
commonplace matters, — of the sea, — of America; 
but though they did not look at each other it was no 
less plain, from a slight but constant smile which 



%ovc5 anb Grievances* 103 

trembled on the lips of both, that this was only the 
exterior accompaniment of an inward and exceed- 
ingly harmonions duet. 

Looking around for the husband I descried him on 
the piazzetta below, deeply attentive to the dis- 
course of one of the officers who was explaining 
the sextant. On one of the long benches about 
midway was the young lady from Mestre with 
her aunt. I observed the latter closely for the first 
time. She was a specimen, not altogether rare, of a 
freak of nature which had enclosed a woman's 
soul in a man's body — broad, bony face — large hands 
— deep voice. All the womanhood of the poor gii'l 
was brought together into the eyes. These were 
small, gray, full of kindness and sweetness; and 
from their expi'ession it was plain that she felt the 
disagreeable want of harmony between her body and 
her spirit ; that she was resigned to her fate of being 
unpleasing; that she tried to keep apart from one 
sex as from the other, and sought in every way to 
pass unnoticed. But that timid resignation and the 
shade of something almost like shame that veiled her 
eyes inspired a sentiment of mingled sympathy and 
pity which made her sometimes seem quite different 
from what she was. All at once and with much sur- 
prise I saw the Garibaldian come and take a seat be- 
side the niece. He bowed respectfully but with an 
air that bespoke a several days' acquaintance. It was 
the first time I had seen him in conversation with a 



I04 



Qn Blue Mater* 



human soul. How could they have become ac- 
quainted ? The young lady spoke from time to time, 
regarding the horizon with her clear, quiet glance, 
he listening with an air of respectful deference, his 




eyes fixed 

upon the deck. I "Xtstening witb an air of respectful Reference." 

imagined that from 

that first moment the soft breath which came from 
those pallid lips might be calling back to life in the 
man's soul many feelings that were dead and buried ; 
but no sign of it appeared upon his face, immovable 



%ovcs anb Ovicvanccs. lo^- 

and stern in spite of its respectful expression. The 
lady of the stateroom next to mine Avas sitting at 
the other end of the bench, dressed too much for a 
steamer's deck, and I'eading ; but the unquiet move- 
ment of her flat little foot showed that her thouo;hts 
were not on the page. The encounter of that morn- 
ing, however, had not chased from her lips theii' usual 
nervous smile, a smile that bespoke an indomitable 
power in domestic strife, a power of stabbing the 
heart or the brain of a husband with pin-pricks for 
thirty years running. What could there be to 
separate them thus ? A carnal aversion like that of 
the married couple in Germinal? No fault that I 
could imagine on the part of either was a cause suf- 
ficient to account for the loathino; there was between 
them ; for the husband, who did not look like a 
villain, w^ould have forgiven her ; and she did not 
seem one of those delicate souls that carry all their 
lives the unclosino^ scar of a treacherous wound. And 
yet I would have sworn that these two creatures 
could never more be reconciled and that the way they 
were in was leading them to crime. 

But what most drew my attention among all these 
people w^as the Brazilian family : husband and wife, 
with three growing children and one infant at the 
breast, carried in arms by a negress short of stature and 
with a bosom like a Hottentot ; all close together on a 
settee near the mizzen-mast, quite silent, like statues, 
and rolling their large black eyes around upon the 



io6 On JBlue Mater. 

passers by as if all moved by one string. The father 
and the mother sat close together, as if each jealous of 
the other, and had the air of being rich. Perhaps they 
had become uncivilized in the solitude of one of those 
/agendas in the intei'ior of Brazil, svs^arming with 
neo^ro slaves, surrounded by boundless fields of su2:ar 
or of coffee, and only to be reached through dense 
forests by many long days of journeying. On the 
bench opposite to them, with her back to the sea, and 
doing fancy work, sat the young lady pianist. I 
could not but remark how deftly she handled the 
little scissors, and note the exquisite art with which 
she managed to get a good long look at everybody, 
yet without displaying the smallest curiosity and 
without allowing anyone to catch her eye. Her 
mother, meanwhile, was talking with the agent, who 
was standing in front of her ; and, from the smile he 
wore, it was plain that she was pulling to pieces with 
delicate ferocity one or more of the company. A 
bright flash of envy which came into her eye an- 
nounced the appearance of the Argentine lady, who 
had not been seen for two days. She came along, 
simply and elegantly dressed and leaning on the arm 
of her husband, with the step and the smile of a 
convalescent who did not try to conceal the pleasure 
she took in being looked at by all. She was indeed 
a noble specimen of the rich beauty of Creole blood. 
Hair and eyes of the blackest, these veiled by long 
lashes; complexion dark and warm, and of marvel- 



%ovc3 anb 6riev>ances» 107 

lous freshness. Her walk, undulating and most 
graceful, set off the lovely fulness of her person. 
And in that walk, that look, that bearing, shone out 
the gay haughtiness of the portena to whom is con- 
ceded the first place among the beauties of Latin 
America, the bold self-i'eliance of the woman born 
amid surroundings of struggle and adventure, a so- 
ciety which respects her for herself alone, and which 
educates her from a child to be ready for any change 
of fortune. Slowly, and with the easy, smiling grace 
of the hostess she made the round of the deck as if 
it were a ball-i'oom, and then sat down near the com- 
pass, — the real one, which, luckily for us all, she 
could not interfere with as she could with ours.^ 

Meanwhile the groups were breaking up and form- 
ing again, so that I found myself for a moment near 
the monoculous Genoese, whose face wore its usual 
expression of infinite boredom, lighted up from time 
to time with thought of food, as a stagnant pool by 
a ray of sun. I asked what he thought of the cui- 
sine on board the Galileo. He shook his head and 
considered a moment ; then, in the tone in which he 
would have pronounced that Russia was abusing the 
forbearance of Europe, he answered : " Look here ! I 
am a candid man. We get more brown sauces than is 
exactly fair, — in my opinion, at least." And yet he 
had a respect for the cook, who had been at the Hotel 
Feder — very strong on sweet dishes — two hundred 

' Far perdere la bussola a qualcheduno, — " To turn his head." 



io8 Qn Blue Mater* 

and fifty lire per month, and a handsome man. He 
offered to present me, but I put off the introduction 
until another time. " Exactly ! " he said, pulling 
out his watch, " I must go and take a look. We 
were to have liver pie to-day.'' And he made way 
for the haliphobous advocate who was passing at the 
moment, his face twisted as usual. This gentleman 
stopped for an instant to listen to the Marsigliese 
who was singing the praises of the sea in the usual 
stock phrases : Mais regardez done I Est ce heau ! 
Est ce imposant I Est ce grand ! J\idore la mer, 
moil The advocate shruo^sred his shoulders with a 
vexed air, as who should say : The sea, beautiful ! 
That 's a strange notion. People when they are all 
comfortable think everything beautiful, like so many 
cretins, drivellers. Mountains beautiful, plains beau- 
tiful. The sky beautiful when it is clear, beautiful in 
storms, — lovely where there is vegetation, lovely 
where there is none. Asses ! To me the sea seems like 
a great puddle, nothing more. " Ah ! what now ? " he 
said, looking uneasily around as the screw gave a 
bang rather more violent than usual. But the queer 
part of it was that while he was talking of the sea 
he never looked at it. The most that he did was to 
send a glance around w^hich rapidly swept the outline 
of the ship ; just as a nervous soldier casts a glance 
towards the enemy which is advancing towards the 
fort. " Never mind," I said, " we have a smooth 
sea." " Ah ! " he said, " I dare say ; a smooth sea, 



%ovcB an^ (Brie\>ances. 109 

no doubt ; and in less than an hour we may all be on 
our knees expecting death." 

At this juncture along came the agent to announce 
a discovery. That plump lady with the red face sit- 
ting there near by, who was always so cross in the 
morning and so jolly in the evening. The mystery was 
cleared up. She drank like a fish. She was said to be 
a beast-tamer and had her preserves in Chili. Posi- 
tively, she had in her stateroom liqueurs of every color 
and of every country, which she kept sipping all the 
time from noon on, out of a collection of little glasses 
which she had had made on purpose — darling little 
bits of glass work — with which she tried to deceive 
herself about her weakness. He had heard it all from 
the mother of the pianist. The lady and her maid 
got half-seas-ovei' regularly every evening, and when 
they were pi'opei'ly primed would talk with any- 
body, saying whatever came into their heads. When 
we 2:ot into the warm res^ions we should hear more 
of them. The lady was at that moment talking 
with a tall passenger whom I had not yet particu- 
larly remarked, a vetei'an globe-trotter, who had on 
the nape of his neck a long red mark. And there 
wei'e stories about him too. He was said to be an 
old sea-captain, a regular beast, and that red streak 
was the mark of an attempt by his sailors to hang 
him on the high seas many years before. We all 
burst out laughing, at which the ''scape-gallows" 
looked round. The name stuck to him. And there 



no Qn iBhxc Maten 

were other nicknames going. One passenger, who 
did not talk with anyone, his nose like a beak, and 
his ears like handles to a head of the uo?no delin- 
qiiente of Lombroso, was called the " fire-bug." The 
Frenchman of the Figaro was called the " thief," no 
less. And another, I have no idea why, received the 
title of " Director of the Society-for-no-more-bad- 
smelling-cesspools." On the first occasion, however, 
all these people made acquaintance and shook hands 
like good friends. " Stop ! " said the agent, all of a 
sudden. " I don't see the Swiss lady and the young 
Tuscan. I must go below and have a look." I re- 
marked that what he suspected was im]3ossible 
because the stewardesses were about. " On the 
contrary," he said, " outposts to announce the ap- 
proach of the enemy \vith an ahem ! " And away 
he went. I looked once more for the professor and 
saw him not far off profoundly musing over the 
magnetic needle ; and just as the agent came back 
with the face of a hunter who has brought down his 
game, he moved away, placidly remarking, " There is 
a little motion." ^' Yes," said the agent, "she does 
pitch a little." With these mild, friendly jests we 
whiled away the hours. 

But the true time to enjoy the sea was towards 
night, when the passengers had all gone below save 
two or three lonely individuals. At that hour, when 
on the yet faintly glimmei'ing western sky the sea 
cut a clear line, and, all black, as if of pitch, did not 



%ovcs atib Grievances. 



Ill 



attract tlie eye at any one point, it was pleasant to 
yield oneself to that ebb and flow of tangled and 
disconnected thoughts which, keeping time to the 
measured cadence of the screw, seem like the ^^assing 
fancies of a dream. But the thoughts at that houi' 
take the color of the sea. Compared with that 
boundless spread of waters which shows no ti'ace of 
man or of time, the objects of our voyage, our little 
pursuits, our own country, all seem so confused, so 
small, so wretched, so far off. And to think that 
three days before leaving we were pained by a cold 
salute from an acquaintance in the Via Bai'baroux. 
How pitiably small a matter ! 

All such things seem now the records of another 
existence, which rise to view for a moment and then 
sink again into that measureless abyss which is under 
and around us. And then we let ourselves be carried 
out over the wide waters in an imaginary ship, that 
sails and sails without rest beyond the farthest land, 
upon that mighty southern ocean w^hose continents 
would, to a micromega, seem all shrunken and drawn 
together into the other hemisphere as if in dread of 
solitude. And then the fancy is lost and confounded 
in that solitude, and eagerly flies back among the 
human race, to creatures that are loved, — to that very 
room where dear faces are gathered around the lamp 
which shines like a sun in our inmost soul. But 
those faces do not smile. On every one of them 
there is the trace of pensive disquietude, and we, 



112 



®n JBlue Mater, 



too, are saddened at the thought that every turn of 
the screw increases the enormous distance that sepa- 
rates us from them. Enormous distance ! To re- 
duce it in conception we think how small the planet 
is in comparison with the universe, a drop of water 
on a lump of mud. How far can the infusoria be 
from each other? Useless! we must come back to 
the comparison of the great earth with ourselves, 
and our feeling of awe is born again as strong as 
ever. Yes, an enormous distance separates us. 

Away, then, with all these visions. Let us think 
of the sea. Our soul shall be lulled to slumber 
upon those boundless waters. How beautiful ! what 
peace ! Yet what horrors has that solemn solitude 
belield ! It has seen gold-greedy buccaneers pass 
over it, whetting their swords for foul carnage in 
the New World. It has looked upon outbreaks of 
kidnapped creatures wallowing in blood in the holds 
of slave ships, long martyrdoms of starving crews, 
hideous wrecks in the darkness, agonized ravings of 
parents and children lashed to the mast, and with 
upturned faces shrieking the name of God as the 
suffocatins: waves rolled over them. And this mis- 
fortune might happen to us by the bursting of a 
boiler, this very night, in an hour, in a moment ! 
Shuddering, we seem to see the slow descent of our 
dead body from region to region through so many 
different worlds of plants, of fish, of shells, of mol- 
lusks, — a vertical of five miles, — until we reach the 



%ovcs anb Grieparxces, 



113 



cold and utter darkness of that boundless stretch of 
living ooze and of microscopic skeletons that con- 
stitutes the bottom of the sea : 



" The enigma of life 



Murmurs and surges down there." 

-L' enigma clella vita 

La sotto oncleggia e mormora. 

Whose are those lines ? Ah ! My good Panzacchi. 
What is he about now, I wonder ? And then visions 
of a festive evening at the 
Artists' Club at Tuiin. 
like a great luminous 
circle which sails 
along beside our 
vessel, bright 
with gleam- 
ing, well- 
known 

faces; «««.»_»™».^ ~ 

and one ^^^^^^^^^^Qj^f i ^^% Y* 

almost hears 

the laughter and 

the voices. Then 

it all goes out, — lamps, 

dreams, friendships, all 

the joys and the doings of humanity ; the eternal 

reality is that formidable mass of water which covers 

four fifths of the earth, and that land, with the 

fearful head whose crown is ice and whose brain is 




114 ^n Blue Mater. 

fire, which flies howling and weeping into the in- 
finite. O Prodigy ! O Mystery ! I would stay here 
on an island for centuries and centuries, my head 
upon my hand, thinking and thinking, so only I 
could for a single instant comprehend it all. 

Duu! Oinqu / Vott ! Tucc ! were the cries that 
I'oused me, coming from a group of Lombard emi- 
grants who every evening played mora on the mid- 
ship deck. At that hour in the cabin people were 
at chess and dominoes. Those who had rooms on 
deck received their friends there, and there were 
lio;hts and there was beer and Bordeaux wine. 
Around the canteen, forward, w^as a throng of pas- 
sengers who presented their order duly signed by 
the commissary for a cup of coffee, a glass of rum, or 
a half-litre of wine to feast the closing day. I went 
on the fore-deck to range like a libertine under pro- 
tection of the darkness, through which I could dimly 
see groups of women with children asleep in their 
arms, men who were drinking all alone, youths wnth 
noses like beagles looking and searching in every 
corner. And that evening I was present for the first 
time at the separation of the two sexes, done under 
the surveillance of the little, old, hunchbacked sailor, 
whose business it was to send the women off to bed. 
There had been nine days of monastic life in the open 
air. Matrimonial tenderness had reawakened a little, 
and, besides the regular relations, others not so legiti- 
mate appeared to be in ti'ain. But the old hunch- 



%ovc6 ant) Grievances* 115 

back bad to separate them all alike, without regard 
to rights, legal or otherwise, and every evening at 
ten o'clock, punctual and inexorable as old Silva, he 
appeared, lantern in hand, and began to poke in every 
coi'ner, loosino; embraces and breaking; off amorous 
colloquies, crying at every five paces, "To bed, to 
bed, you women ! To bed, you girls!" Comical it 
was to the last degree. The couples i*esisted. Separ- 
ated here they came together again farther on, be- 
tween the washhouse and the butcher's shop, under 
shadow of the cattle-pens, in dark passages, in every 
place where no light came from the lantern. And 
then the poor old boy went back on his tracks, 
patiently repeating his ''Come, you women! come, 
my children ! It is time," — Andemnio donne ! An- 
deriimo figgie ! Clie Ve 06a. Sometimes to propiti- 
ate the recalcitrants he would say, Andemnio scignoe^ 
— " Come, ladies ! " 

In about a quarter of an hour the women moved 
in procession, Just as if it were a dress promenade, 
between two rows of men down throu2fh the cabin 
door into the bowels of the vessel. Some came 
back once more, holding out the baby to be kissed 
by its papa. Some stopped to squeeze and squeeze 
aojain the hand of a new friend ; others stood and 
called their lao:o:ing: children : Gioanniiin ! Bac- 
cicciiin ! Putela ! Picciridu ! Piccinitt! Gennariello! 
and the lifted lantern shone on languishing glances 
from pretty girls, on the glittering eyes of young fel- 



ii6 ©n Blue Mater, 

lows, the discontented looks of husbands whom the 
regulations annoyed ; and still the old fellow kept 
calling out, ^' Come, come, scignoe, a little faster, ladies, 
if you please,*" until the last of the procession had 
gone below. But the old boy, who knew his kittle 
cattle, went back to make another tour of the deck, 
quite sure of finding some lurking mischief, of un- 
earthing some darkling inti'igue. 

And so it was every evening. I followed him at a 
little distance and heard his scandalized father-guard- 
ian exclamations ; and male voices would answer de- 
siring him to go to the devil, while softer tones would 
be heard apparently denying something or begging 
for mercy. But he had no mercy. And I could 
see, amid a volley of coughs, women run by with 
their liair down and coverino^ their faces to conceal 
them from the eager and cui'ious bystanders. As 
soon as he had swept up the last fragments of love- 
making the old hunchback with the lantern stood 
before me, and, wiping his l)row with his hand, 
growled out, "There's another cursed day gone!" 
Ah ! die 7neste ! — " Ugh, wdiat a ti'ade ! " But on his 
rough, good-natured old face, as he looked down 
the stairway, there was a look of pity for all 
that trouble, and perhaps a little sympathy with all 
those yearnings which he had "only obeyed orders" 
in chasing below. "Hard duty, eh?" I said to get 
him into talk and hear some of his philosophy. He 
raised his lantern a little to look me in the face, and 



Xopcs aiiD (Bricpauces* 



117 



tlieii <Tft(^i' a iiiomcnL of rc^flccl Ion snid, scnlcniionsly : 
'' WIkui .'I, ni.'iu |c>/y/yy/f>| liiids liiinsclf in IJk^ j)<)sili()n, 
;i,s I fiixl myself in I, Ik^ position, to jii(r^(! j)('oj>I(i ;ts 
tUoy iiv() on l)OMi(l licrc, ii^^(!ni,l(^ <*i,n(l siinj)l(', ;i,n<l ilio 
tilings tli.'il, _L!,() on in .-i slii|), funny .-md soi'iowful, .-ind 
the men and (lie women, hiil, (Ih^ vvonKui more iliaii 
i-lie men, l)(di(^ve me, Hciijuoiu'^ lie gels ,*i, nofion 1 lial, 
il, is no use being siirpi'ised al, .-mi y filing-, and is I'eady 
io J)iit nj> wifli almost (sveryfliing." So sa,ying, Ik; 
(lisaj)p(;<*ii-ed, and llie men also one after another \v(;nt 
bcdow. ^V\\K\ s]ii|) was sil(Mit and (jui(;t, like souk; 
cnornioiis animal that was gliding diowsily ovei* the 
s(^a, without sound sa,v(! foi' th(; ni(\'isur(Ml beatinji' 
of its migh(,y heart. 





CHAPTER VII 



THE TROPIC OF CANCER 




HE next day we were to pass the 
Ti'opic of Caucei". I was told 
this early in the morning by the 
steward with his usual down- 
cast look, — for he practised, 
among otlier things, the affec- 
tation of dropping his eyes while he spoke, as if 
to conceal the joy that filled his soul at the pros- 
pect of final triumph in the quest of love. But the 
Tropic of Cancer. It was the despiteful harbinger 
of nearly three thousand miles of torrid zone which 
we must pass before we could feel the cool trade- 
winds of the other hemisphere ; and with the very 
thought I seemed to feel two great drops of sweat 
course down my temples. I looked out of the 
port, and lo ! a wonder. The ocean most placid, 
all silver and rosy red, covered with a transpai-ent 
veil of vapor which the rising sun made look like a 
luminous cloud of dust ; and then some miles away, 

ii8 



XTbe ITropic ot Cancer, 119 

in the very midst of that boundless vii'giu beauty of 
air and water, a large ship which seemed immovable, 
her broad, white sails like the outspread wings of a 
gigantic swan that was I'egarding us. I open the 
port and a delicious waft of sea air floods my face 
and breast, runs down into my very veins, and stirs 
me up like a breath from a freshened world. The 
ship was a Swedish sailing vessel, probably from the 
Cape of Good Hope ; the first sail we had seen since 
Gibraltar. For a few moments she shone white 
before my eyes in the clearness of that enchanting 
moi'ning, welcome as the greeting of a friend ; then 
she passed out of view and the ocean seemed more 
solitary than before ; but kindlier, too, than I had 
ever seen it ; as if the horizon were the boundary 
of an enormous garden. It was one of those morn- 
ings in which passengers meet one another on deck 
with smiling faces and outstretched hands, as though 
the first breath of the rising day had brought each 
of them some good news. 

But in a few hours all this fair prospect was dark- 
ened, the sky was clouded over, the air grew heavy 
and hot as if we had made a leap from spring into 
the midst of summer. We had entered that mass of 
vapor, terror of the navigators of old, which the 
great heat of the equator draws up from the ocean 
and heaps upon the torrid zone, and which those 
happy creatures of Jules Verne's creation, as they 
travel in the sky, see as a dark belt stretched around 



I20 Qn Blue Maten 

our planet like the blue streaks upon the disc of 
Jupiter. The smooth sea of that morning was the 
last smile of the temperate zone softened by the last 
waft of the trade- winds. We were now sailins^ in 
the region of clouds, of thickest showers, of doleful 
dulness. And its influence was straightway seen 
among the third-class people. The agent came for 
me in the saloon. ^' Come and see some alley squab- 
bles/ " he said ; " the play has begun." 

A parcel of women had risen in rebellion about 
the distribution of fresh water, of which, over and 
above the number of litres allowed each rancJio, a 
sailor was to serve out a certain quantity to every 
woman when she asked for it for her own personal 
use. So some complained that it had been refused 
them while the others received it. But it was an 
intricate matter. It was the outbreak of a resent- 
ment they had long been brooding over against 
what they regarded as an habitual and not uninter- 
ested injustice. The old women said the young 
ones were preferred because they played the co- 
quette ; these on the contrary declared that the old 
ones were favored because they had money and 
greased the palms of those in charge. Others again 
complained that the gentlefolk, the qicaliti/, were 
treated with more distinction ; the sig)iore, forsooth, 
poor, decayed creatures who had nothing left of that 

^ ' 'Alley squabbles," haruffe chiozzotte. Chiozza answers very well to 
Billingsgate, — its inhabitants being noted for fluent and abusive slang. 



XTbe XTropic ot Cancer* 



121 



about them but the worn dress and the sad mem- 
ory. The most waspish of the protestants were 
crowded together in a corner near the kitchen, where 
the carcass of a calf was hanging up. When I got 
there the commissary was 
surrounded by fifteen or 
twenty slipshod women, 
red as turkey-cocks, all 
talking together in three 
or four different dialects, 
and all pointing the finger 
of accusation at the sailor 
in charge, who, with his 
great beard like a Capu- 
chin friai', stood thei'e as 
unmoved in the midst of 
all that cackle as a statue 
in a gale of wind. "But 
I do not understand a 
word," said the commis- 
sary, with native coolness. 
" Do me the small favor 
to speak one at a time." 
And the looks of some 
of the younger ones sof- 
tened a little as they 
rested on the white hands 

and rosy cheeks of the handsome fellow ; but in the 
eyes of the rest there flashed that sombre fire which 




Ube commissar^!. 



122 



On mwc Mater* 



gleams in the face of the low-lived woman whenever 
she disputes even about the merest trifle with her 
betters, and which arises from vague ill-will of very 
old date and quite independent of the matter in 
hand. Jn7i halossad ! we heard some of them 
say. I^ure nui avinimo pagato signurl. A Te ova 
cVjinila^ — " We have paid too. There must be an 
end of this." And the women's complaints were 
backed up by dull murmurs from a little crowd of 
men, who in their secret hearts enjoyed the show, 
and moreover encourag^ed the malcontents from class 
sympathy and perhaps from a little embryo insolence 
as future republicans. At last the commissaiy ob- 
tained a partial silence, one woman only speaking. 
I had but time to see a head of tano-led hair and a 
raised forefinger keeping time to a flood of gutter 
eloquence when an outburst of exclamations drowned 
her voice : " That 's not true ! " Taze vii ! Busiarda! 
Olie'l me senta 7ni ! A Ve n^onta I — " Hold your 
tongue ! Liar ! Listen to me ! It 's a shame ! " 
Then in the press a baby began to cry, and they 
were ready to tear each other's eyes out. 

Suddenly a woman's shrill shriek was heard, and the 
people were seen running together neai' the foremast. 
In a moment there was a crowd there, and a loud 
burst of laughter, as if at something that had hap- 
pened. The news spread, and more people flocked in 
from every side until there was a bustle and a laugh- 
ing from the kitchen to the forecastle. But it was a 



TLbc Uropic ot Cancer* 123 

broad suggestive laugh which, with certain winks 
and nudges that passed, sufficiently showed what 
kind of event it was that had happened. And such 
was the curiosity to know the cause of it all that the 
very disputants, forgetting their quarrel, rushed off 
to see what was the matter. It seems tliat a couple 
of flying fish sailing across the deck had hit the rig- 
ging and fallen, one among the wheels of the donkey 
engine and the other right upon the bosom of a 
young damsel, — and headforemost, as if he meant to 
keep on. As soon as she could, the girl ran behind 
the butcher's shop ; and a clown of an emigrant car- 
I'ied the shameless fish about, yelling something or 
other like tlje criers in the seraglio until the com- 
missary signed him to be quiet. But the scurrility 
and the laughing went on all the same, while the 
two sea-swallows, shining like silver and passing 
from hand to hand, served to quiet down somewhat 
the rising irritation of the " working classes." 

Meanwhile, I marked among the first-class pas- 
sen2;ers several individuals : the Marsicyliese, the Tus- 
can, the tenor, who seemed in the habit of hunting 
about among the third-class people. The most con- 
spicuous among them was the Marsigliese who, with 
his face like a dropsical Napoleon, went marauding 
around the companion-way of the women's cabin 
swaying his great Patagonian torso about upon his 
bow legs. The agent told me he had begun a regu- 
lar series of visits among the emigrant ladies with 



124 On JBIue "CXIlater* 

conquering-hero ideas, and liked to allude to them 
from time to time with a gently closed eye : ^' II y 
a qiielqiie cJiose a faire par la, savez vous ! " And 
he had tried to smooth his path with the men by an 
ostentation of natural sympathy flavored with a dash 
of socialism ; but besides not getting on at all with 
the many he had heard remarks from certain indi- 
viduals that made him think a horse kicked him (cla 
levare il pelo, — to make the hair stand up, literally). 
Those persons of education and breeding in whose 
minds the innate idea of equality is fortified by 
association, have no idea how general is the almost 
unconscious contemjot with which the democratic 
middle class regards the people, and how few there 
are who, even when they wish to conciliate them by 
treating them as equals, can talk with them and not 
make them feel conscious of it. Seeing, therefore, 
the failure of his first little attempts the Marsigliese 
had been less assiduous, and confined his views to a 
mere ^' artistic search " after the beautiful. He did 
from time to time discover a handsome face, and de- 
scribed it to me at table, boasting that he could dis- 
tinguish the various Italian types. He held forth 
upon the Tuscan nose, the Venetian mouth, the 
Lombard contours (attaccature) with inconceivable 
self-sufliciency ; and though, as had been proved to 
him more than once, he had mistaken the Val d' 
Aosta for Calabria, with other similar colossal blun- 
ders, he went on undismayed, teaching everybody 



Ube XTropic ot Cancer* 125 

" . . . La houehe de lafemme Toscane . . . Le 
type Genois^ messieurs, . . . J^ai rema/'que qtce 
I ''angle facial Nafpolitaiii . . . II y a la une 
nuance, je vous assured It was delightful. 

But at breakfast that morning he did not succeed 
in cheering up the guests. They began to feel the 
influence of the tropics, and their dulness was in 
piteous lack of keeping with the bright waistcoats 
and white jackets which the sudden heat had brought 
plentifully out. For a few moments only he waked 
us up with a little discussion, into which the Argen- 
tines mischievously drew him, upon the Malthusian 
theory, and especially upon the old, old question as 
to whether emigration is a sufficient remedy for over- 
population. Wholly unread in Malthus, but burn- 
ing to show that he was a well-informed man, he 
rashly maintained that emigration depopulated a 
country, that Europe in a hundred years would be 
half-wilderness, with the wolves and bears at the 
very city gates. The others said No, locuvas (non- 
sense). In every country births were more numerous 
than deaths ; nor this alone, but that in the countries 
so left the species was propagated more freely, be- 
cause, the means of subsistence being in more favor- 
able proportion to the number of inhabitants, mar- 
riage was easier, and the gaps were always filled, and 
more ; the proof of this being that in countries from 
which there is much emio^ration there is no sensible 
diminution of misery. ^^ P as possible ! '''' answered 



126 ©n Mm Maten 

the Marsigliese, boldly; ^''jprouvez moi cela!'^'' But 
the others, with that admirable readiness of memory 
for which they were remarkable, quoted Mai thus to 
show that ill the years of fullest emigration England 
did not cease to suffer from want. '^ Maltlius, 11! a 
pas dit cela ! '''' ^'How? How?" But he, without 
either admitting or denying, said nothing at all. 
*' Stuart Mill," they went on, "holds that emigration 
by no means releases us from the necessity of pro- 
viding against the increase of population. You will 
allow that he has said that." Then the other, 
frankly, " Pas precisement^ 7nessieursy And as he 
knew no more of Stuart Mill than he did of Malthus 
he backed down (sincaponivd)^ amid the laughter of 
his interlocutors, who saw the joke. 

This was the only cheerful passage of the breakfast. 
The cloudy horizon, the gray sea, and the heat, which 
began to bedew our faces with sweat, kept all the rest 
of the company quite silent. The blonde lady only 
showed a countenance as cool as a rosy apple, sending 
a double spray of words into the ear of her husband 
on her left, and over the tenor on her right, now 
and then between whiles encouraging the little Tus- 
can with a glance or so not to be jealous of her new 
friend. And we had to thank her, moreover, for a 
gleam of hilarity which hovered over the yawning 
groups on deck during the heavy hours of chylifica- 
tion. A naive blunder of hers had been going the 
rounds all the morning, and showed how wholly 



XLbc ITropic ol Cancer. 



127 



confused were the ideas of geography shut u[) under 
that crown of curly gokl. The agent, meeting her, 
had said, ''Signora, we cross the Tropic of Cancer 




"Scn&ing a &oublc spiav: of wor&s into tbe ear of bci- bu6ban& on ber left, 
anb over tbe tenor on ber riabt." 

to-day." " O, indeed ! " she cried, with enthusiasm. 
"Then we shall see something at last ! " 

Birt I could not understand how one could be dull 
on board ship — on the contrary, I rather liked seeing 
how bored the others wei'e for the same reason that 
makes one feel so happy at being well Avlien those 
around are suffering with sea-sickness. And to-day 
there could be no lack of diversion. BetAveeu one 
o'clock and four, the most trying time, I began to see 



128 On Blue Matei\ 

faces that half made me think : Now they will drop 
to pieces and have to be swept off the deck. It was 
not the ennui which Leopardi calls the greatest of 
human sentiments, but a pitiful slackening of mental 
fibre, betrayed by the drooping of eyelids, of cheeks, 
of lips, as if these faces had been made of boiled 
meat. Among those most tormented was the Geno- 
ese, who stood looking through the window of the 
engine-room, with a face upon which there was not 
even a dying gleam of intelligence. " What are you 
doing here ? " I asked. " Why are you not in the 
kitchen?" He had just come from there. JSTo 
news. Thought there would be tagliatelli (flat 
maccaroni) to-morrow. Could not be sure. And 
then he explained why he stood so long looking at 
the monotonous movement of a piston-rod. It was 
his theory about boredom, — his own. " I have re- 
marked," he said, " that a man is bored because one 
cannot prevent himself from thinking of disagreeable 
things. The only way, therefore, to get rid of bore- 
dom is to be like the beasts, and not think at all. 
So I stand here quite still and watch that rod go up 
and down. Little by little, in about twenty minutes, 
I bring myself to a condition of perfect stupidity — 
a very ass. So I do not think about anything at all 
and am not bored. JSfo gli^e atro. That 's all there 
is to it." I burst out laughing, but he was quite 
grave, and turned round to gaze at the piston-rod 
again^ his eye fixed and dilated like a dead man's. 



trbe XTropic of Cancer, 129 

I wanted to tell liim that a better way to get out of 
himself would be to go right down and see the 
whole engine ; but perceiving that the desired effect 
was in a fair way of being brought about I forbore. 
And then I went down myself. 

One reflection I had made, every day, in this con- 
nection, and that was that probably not ten out of 
the seventeen hundred passengers on board the 
Galileo knew what the engine was like or had any 
curiosity about it. And so of a hundred other 
mechanical marvels of human wit. We make use 
of them and go our way regardless ; not less ig- 
norant than the savages whom we despise for their 
ignorance. And yet not only for those whose ideas 
go no farther than a huge kettle and a mysterious 
and intricate mass of wheels, but also for many who 
have read about these things in books, it is a great 
pleasure to get into the blue overalls of the machinist 
and for the first time go down into that dark noisy 
kind of infernal region of which they had never yet 
seen anything but the ascending smoke. When 
down at bottom one looks up at the faint gleam of 
day above, one seems to have descended from the 
roof to the deepest foundations of a lofty edifice ; 
and at the sight of all those steep iron ladders, one 
above another, those horizontal gratings, that variety 
of cylinders, of mighty tubes, of rods and joints of 
every description, all driven by furious life and all 
together making up some kind of formidable mon- 



130 Qn Blue Mater* 

ster, whicli witli its liiinclred limbs occupies a third 
part of the enormous ship, one stands fixed in won- 
der and humiliation at seeming so small beside that 
prodigy of power. And the wonder grows when 
we push on into the volcano that gives life to it all, 
and walk among those mighty boilers,— six steel-built 
houses standing on four crossing streets like a dis- 
trict barred up and on fire, — where many black, half- 
naked men with red faces and bloodshot eyes, who 
swallow at every moment floods of water, toil cease- 
lessly to feed thirty-six red-hot mouths which, urged 
by the blast of six huge ventilators that roar like 
the open throats of lions, devour in the twenty-four 
hours a hundred tons of coal. We seem to come 
back to life when, issuing thence, all dripping 
with sweat, we stand once more before the engine, 
where but a moment ago we seemed quite buried. 
And yet it takes some time to get one's ideas 
together. The engineer may explain as much as he 
likes, but all that dizzying movement of pistons and 
rockers and governors and what not, among which 
the oilers move with such blood-chilling coolness ; 
the stunning uproar of the cranks, the whistling of 
valves, the dull plunge of the pumps, the sharp 
stroke of the eccentrics ; the spectres who, lamp in 
hand, climb up and down the ladders, appear and 
disappear, above, below, on every side, and light up 
with weird gleam steel, iron, bronze, brass, copper ; 
strange shapes and movements hardly understood; 



Ubc tTropic of Cancer* 131 

unknown depths, unexplored passages ; all this 
upsets the few clear ideas we may have had on 
comino: down here. 

We feel reassured by the mighty strength of this 
machinery ; but our security diminishes as we mark 
with what anxious care the attendants watch it, listen- 
ing to hear wdiether in that anif orm concert of sound 
there be the faintest tone of discord, snuffing for the 
merest suspicion of burning amid all those familiar 
smells ; how they run here and there to feel if the 
metal be hotter than it should be, to look if there be 
unjustified smoke, and to keep up that unbroken rain 
of oil which, from fifty long-nosed cans, runs down 
through the joints of that colossal frame. For that 
colossal frame, which copes successfully with the gales 
of ocean, is as delicate as a human body ; the smallest 
disorder in any of its members is felt throughout, 
and must instantly be remedied. It does indeed 
resemble a living thing. Thirsty, like the men that 
feed it, from the fire that burns within, it must 
swallow up unceasingly a torrent of water from the 
sea and send it out again in boiling streams ; and 
all that complication of rods and joints is like a 
Titanic body, whose every effort is concentrated 
upon giving formidable impulse to a mighty arm of 
iron, driver of the great bronze screw which tears up 
the ocean and urger the whole mass onward. As 
we look, the Liburnian of old time comes into our 
minds with its three pairs of paddle-wheels moved 



132 Qn mwc Mater^ 

by tlie slow tread of oxen ; and we think with pride 
of the wonder which would fix one of that ao^e to 
the spot^ could he see what we see, and the cry of 
amazement which would burst from his soul. But 
he could not imagine what that miracle had cost his 
fellow-creatures. A century of fruitless attempts ; 
a legion of great geniuses who spent their whole 
lives over an improvement which the next generation 
consigned to oblivion — the martyrdom of Papin ; 
the suicide of John Fitch ; the poverty of Jouffroy ; 
Fulton made a mock of; Savage driven mad; an 
interminable series of injustice, of pitiful struggles, 
of doubts, and of despair. The examples of genius 
and heroic constancy to be found in this great history 
must console the human race for the existence of 
that stubborn ignorance, that ferocious greed, that 
detestable envy which fought against them and 
would have crashed them if it could have done so. 
All this that wonderful monster, with its hundred 
harsh and weary voices, says to us ; and yet it may 
seem to our remote descendants the weak and 
clumsy work of groping beginners. 

Going up again I met at the top of the stairs the 
tall priest, who, pointing with one hand to the en- 
gine, put the forefinger of the other in front of my 
face like a wax candle. I did not understand ; but 
what he wished to say was that the engine of the 
Galileo had cost a million. I thanked him, put aside 
the finger, and went on deck again just at the right 



XTbe XIropic ot Cancer* 



^33 



moment to see, for the firsfc time, my friend the com- 
missary in the exercise of his function as justice of the 
peace in a most curious " case." 
The big Bolognese was at that 
instant going into his room \^ 
with the face of a wounded 
lioness, her inseparable pouch 
around her neck. There was W^' 
nothino^ to cover the entrance 
but a thin green curtain, so 
every word could easily be 
heard. That unhappy com- 
missary ! I was not long in 
coming to a sense of what en- 
ormous patience he had to 
exercise in these sittings. The 
voice of the complainant be- 
gan to be raised, quivering 
with rage and full of haughti- 
ness and threateninp;. All I 
could make out was that she 
complained of some injury 
which appeared to be neither 
more nor less than a surmise 
ventured upon by a fellow- 
passenger as to the contents 
of the mysterious pouch. She 
stated the facts, demanded the 
punishment of the insulter, and Ai^*^y. 




134 ©n Blue Matei% 

called upon the commissary to do his duty. He 
in turn desired her to respect liis office, and to 
be calm, promising to look into the matter. At 
these words her voice softened a little, and she 
appeared to commence a long story in a senti- 
mental tone, which gradually rose to the dramatic. 
Yes, it was her autobiography, the usual thing — a 
distinguished family, a relative who wrote to the 
newspapers and would call them all to account, a 
father and mother, good bringing up ; then misfor- 
tunes, the injustice of fate, a l)lameless life ; and, in due 
time, the inevitable crisis — the burst of tears. Then 
I heard the voice of the commissary soothing her. 

Meanwhile a little crowd had gathered before 
the door, men and women of the third class, among 
them that clown-faced peasant who had lost the tip 
of his nose. He appeared to be the culprit, for lie 
was making excuses. "After all, I did n't say I was 
sure, did I ? It was only a sort of guess." He was 
the culprit; and when he reached the conmiissary's 
door he went in, saying, '' Hei'e I am." Straightway 
came an outburst of Bolognese abuse, which utterly 
belied the lady's claim to distinguished descent. 
'^ Carogna d^un fastidi! At el fegliet d^avgnlrom 
dinam f At clap j)r'^ el col^ hrott piwzell ! brott grogn 
d^un vilcin seinza educazion ! " Then all three voices 
together, and finally the culprit's only. If you will 
believe it, the quarrel was about the supposed con- 
tents of the famous pouch, as to which all the gentle 



Ube Uroptc ot Cancer^ 135 

creatures of the fore-deck had been cudgelling their 
brains these nine days, and making the most ridicu- 
lous conjectures. But I did not catch the fatal word. 
I did, howevei', hear the commissary give the peasant 
a setting-down, threatening to put him in irons, the 
peasant making excuses, and the Bolognese scolding 
all the while, until, at last, the man came out with 
his head hanging and the woman with her head high. 
Then, raising the green curtains, I went in, to find 
the judge rolling on the sofa with his hands to his 
sides, suffocated with suppressed laughter. What 
was the surmise ? What was supposed to be in that 
blessed pouch ? You would never guess in the 
world. One of the most ridiculous notions that 
ever passed through the l)rain of an impertinent 
clown ; one which would have made the most crabbed 
moralist laugh in his beard, and to which the author^ 
of the £aruffe Chiozzotte, with respect be it spoken, 
might have set his name. And I had to make way 
to the sofa, too ; but straightway had to rise as 
another woman came to complain of " certain reports 
which had been put in circulation about her." " Alas, 
poor commissary," I said as I went out, "the day has 
begun badly and will end worse." " Oh, this is 
nothing," he said in his mild, resigned voice, and 
with a look at the thermometer. " Wait until we 
have 97°, Fahrenheit." Then putting on his judge's 
face he turned to the newcomer. 

' Goldoni, Chioggia Squabbles. See p. 120. 



136 Qn JSlue Mater* 

But the heat had upset us in the after-cabin no 
less, as might easily be perceived that evening. It 
was pitiable. There were half a dozen creatures 
who ten days before did not know of one another's 
existence ; who in ten days more were to separate 
forever ; who, one would imagine, had nothing so 
important to think of as what they had left be- 
hind in Europe, or what they were going to in 
America; who had nothing but a couple of planks 
between them and the bottomless sea ; and who yet 
had devised all sorts of tangled intrigues, mutual 
hatreds, and complicated antipathies. There was 
national rancor between the Chilian and the Peru- 
vian, between the Italian and the Frenchman ; bick- 
erings between the Italians of different provinces ; 
miserable jealousies among the ladies, mushroom 
growth of shameful little spitefulnesses which broke 
out in cross looks or reciprocal ostentations of 
neglect and aversion. One half of the passengers 
was ready to scratch the faces of the other half. 
And this quite independent of other vulgarities. 
Alas ! If the Galileo had foundered on the spot 
she would not have carried to the bottom many 
lofty souls. The only two who, as far as one could 
judge, would have deserved to survive were the 
young lady from Mestre and the Garibaldian who, 
even on that evening, were sitting together con- 
versing. Their acquaintance, the agent told me, 
arose from his having been comrade to the young 



Ubc Uvo^ic ot Cancer, 137 

lady's brother, wounded at Bezzecca and dying in 
hospital at Brescia. No doubt his soul was far 
above the wretched little jealousies of the others, 
for his face expressed such an indifference about 
himself, about life, and about his fellow-creatures, 
such a cold and lofty scorn of everything that was 
low, that everyone avoided him as if they instinct- 
ively perceived in him a foe. And the manner in 
which the pair separated late that evening struck 
me most foi'cibly, remaining in my mind as the most 
vivid impression of the day. Yes, I can, even now, 
see that handsome, haughty giant rise and bend his 
head with its impress of attempted suicide before 
that pale, pale mask, that face as of the dead, in 
which no expression was left but the bright hope of 
a life hereafter. 



CHAPTER VIII 



A YELLOW OCEAK" 




T lliis point I find on the cover of 
my Bergbaus Atlas, wliei'e I made 
some notes every day, these 
words: "lltli day. Stroke of 
spiritual apoplexy," and I call to 
mind a singular psychological 
phenomenon, which occurred to me on that day, and 
which falls to the lot of everyone, I suppose, on a 
long voyage, so soon as the novelty of life on board 
ship has worn off. Some fine morning, as you go on 
deck, dulness comes down on your soul all of a sud- 
den, like the blow of a club on the back of your neck. 
Everything has lost color ; you feel an inexpressible 
disgust for life and all about you ; there is a sense of 
suffocation, such as one might experience who, fall- 
ing aslee]3 in the open air, should wake up in a dun- 
geon with the gyves upon his wrists. At such a 
moment you seem to have been at sea from time im- 
memorial, like the passengers in that fantastic dis- 

138 



H )3ellow Ocean. 139 

coveiy ship of Edgar A. Poe; and tlie idea of passing 
another fortniglit on that bundle of planks among 
all those boredom-stricken wretches overwhelms you. 
You cannot help yourself ; this strange brain-sickness, 
hitherto unknown, will surely get hold of you before 
the voyage is over. How get rid of the torture ? 
Kind Heaven, how ? Write ! But, as many a one 
has remarked before, the ship attacks the writer in 
one of his weakest points, the sense of harmony ; 
the noise of the screw makes him write the same 
word over twenty times in a page. Read ! But, 
with the very idea of forcing yourself to write you 
have shut up all your books in the trunks that are 
down in the hold. You seriously think of taking a 
sleeping draught, of tipsifying yourself with cognac, 
or of trying, like the Genoese, the experiment of the 
piston-rod. O for something new ! A hundred lire 
for this morning's Corriere Mercantile ! A pound 
of blood for an island ! Let us have a mutiny, a 
hurricane, the wreck of matter and the crash of 
worlds, so only we may for one day get out of this 
horrible condition. 

The sea showed itself that morning in one of its 
ugliest aspects ; moveless beneath a low-hanging 
arch of lazy-pacing clouds of a dirty-yellow color 
and looking viscid, like so much fat mud in which a 
harpoon would have stood upi'ight like a toothpick 
in a lump of mastic ; and it seemed as if no fish 
glanced through it, but only foul, deformed creatures 



I40 ©n Blue Matet* 

of its own color. It may be that the plains to the 
west of the Caspian Sea, when they are covered with 
mire from a volcanic eruption, present a similar ap- 
pearance. If this great sea, salt like the blood, and 
provided with a pulse, a heart, a circulation, had 
been, not an inorganic element, but an enormous liv- 
ing, thinking animal, I should have said that morning 
that the creature was wandering in his mind and had 
a headful of formless, unconnected fancies like any 
half-drunken brute. But the sea did not look as if 
alive. There was not a breath of wind, not a ripple, 
not a wrinkle on the water. It looked like that 
desert corner of the ocean ^ lying between the cur- 
rent of Humboldt and the stream that meets it from 
the centre of the Pacific — a region long unexplored, 
lying out of the lines of traffic, where no ship is to 
be seen, no whale, no porpoise, no gull; a place 
which everything avoids, where all sign of life dis- 
appears, and where the crew of any ship that should 
be forced by wind and tempest to pass over it might 
well feel that they were sailing the waters of a per- 
ished world. 

But by the blessing of Providence these attacks 
of ennid are like twinges in the joints, — terrible but 
short. And the captain helped us out. At break- 
fast that morning he was in the vein, and chatted, 
full of good-humor, though one would hardly have 
thought so from his look. As usual, this was his 

' Known as " The Desolate Sea." 



H J^ellow Ocean. 141 

best hour. He had by that time overhauled the 
reckouings of his officers, pricked off the ship's place 
on the chart, computed what we had done and what 
was yet to do, seen that the Galileo had made good 
way in the last twenty-four houi's; and, when there 
was nothing specially disagreeable going on, there he 
would sit at table, rubbing his hands, and keeping 
up the conversation. But even at these times he 
failed not to '' rattle down " the stewards in sailor 
phrase, both for a salutary warning to them and by 
way of keeping his own hand in. To one who made 
vain excuses he shouted, Va via, impostd ! — " Be off ! 
you humbug ! " Another he threatened with due 
7riasGhae ! — " a pair of boxed ears." To a third, Mia, 
sae, die se comenqo a giastemmd ! — " If I begin to use 
bad language, look out ! " And he threatened with 
manual and pedal castigation Ruy Bias in particular, 
who answered with the gentlest of smiles, as one 
that should say, " Rage, Tyrant ! thou hast the 
power, but not the love." Indeed, I 'm afraid that 
our good captain's language was a little too lurid for 
ladies' company. But we held him excused when 
we thought of the many captains of other nations 
who are perfect gentlemen at table and hard drink- 
ers in their rooms; for since we had to trust some 
one with our lives, it seemed better, after all, that it 
should be a temperate boor Qmsticone) than an aris- 
tocratic drunkard. 

Accordingly that morning, as usual, he called 



142 ©11 Blxxc Maten 

tliem all ragamuffins on one side and swine on tlie 
other, and then began to converse (quietly. His talk 
was that of the blunt sailor, and I remember it well 
from the torture it gave to my unhappy neighbor, 
the advocate. It was the plump lady, the supposed 
tamer of beasts, who gave an unfortunate turn 
to the discourse by asking the captain, with an in- 
opportuneness which betrayed matutinal Chartreuse, 
Avhat was the most usual cause of shipwreck. The 
captain answered that there were more than fifty 
causes of marine disaster — explosion, fire, leaks, hur- 
ricanes, cyclones, typhoons, reefs, sandbanks, colli- 
sions, and so on. Half of the wrecks, however, arose 
from professional ignorance ; from rashness ; from 
carelessness ; from ill-built vessels ; in short, from 
preventible causes. One year with another, there 
were about six thousand wrecks of vessels large and 
small ; \vithout taking into account China, Japan, 
and Malaysia. 

The advocate began to look gloomy from the first, 
and pretended not to listen ; but it was clear that a 
morbid curiosity overcame his prudence. And it 
was worse still when the same lady, making one of 
those conversational leaps so common with her sex, 
asked the captain how one felt and what one saw 
when sinking in deep water. 

^^ Cose se 'preuva^'^ said the captain, ^' no savieivo. 
What one feels I do not know, but as to what one 
sees, it is something like this. For a while you see 




*# 



Ibe fatic5 not to 'rattle &own' tbe 2tewai-5a»" 



144 ®u JBlue Mater. 

the light, a dim, livid light, then it is like the twi- 
light, they say — a red color — rather grim, and then 
good-bye — utter darkness, great fall in temperature 
down to freezing. Still," he continued, turning to 
the poor advocate as if to console him, " maybe it is 
not altogether dark, perhaps there are chance streaks 
of phosphorus ; but it is not cheerful at any rate." 

The advocate began to show signs of impatience, 
growling under his breath : '' Is this the way to talk 
on shipboard ? I shall leave the table ; no more 
breeding than so many horned brutes ! " 

Whereon the old Chilian, the monoculous 
Genoese, and the captain began to recall and de- 
scribe celebrated shipwrecks, each more horrible 
than the other, with that indifference to death which 
is apt to get down into the soul through the ali- 
mentary canal when we are seated at a well-spread 
table ; and on they went, from the famous raft of 
the Medusa to the A tlas, which disappeared between 
Marseilles and Algiers without ever being heard of 
again. The captain spoke of the English steamers 
Nautilus^ Newton- ColviUe^ and another which left 
Dantzic in December, 1866, and vanished like ghosts 
without anyone ever knowing when or how. 

The advocate ceased eating. 

But the captain went on. With the eloquence of 
one who recounts a scene in which his life has been 
at stake, he described a terrific gale which caught 
him on the English coast when he was in command 



B igellow ©cean» 



145 



of a sailing ship ; and, as he came to the crisis, he 
imitated in a liead voice, but with admirable exacti- 
tude, the prolonged and despairing cry of the man 
at the wheel: Andemmo a 
foooooondo ! — " Down she 
go-o-o-o-o-o-es ! " 

At these w ords the ad- 
vocate rose, and, dashing 
his napkin on the table, 
went hurriedly away, 
grinding out curses that 
would have done dam- 
age if they had reached 
the address. But as he 
often retired before the 
rest, the captain fortun- 
ately took no notice. No 
sooner was he gone thai 
the conversation changed 
ex ahrupto as if hitherto 
it had been carried on wii li 
purpose to annoy him; .11 id 
our commander began to give 
the talk that varied color and 
those strange turns which no one can impart to ifc 
like a transatlantic steamer captain, to whom the 
widely separated parts he visits and in which he 
passes his life are always present to his mind and all 
mixed up together. From the last representation of 




(Srin&ing out curses.** 



146 ®n Bine mater* 

J^j'a Diavolo at the Paganini iii Genoa lie passed 
over to a quarrel lie had had, at St. Vincent of the 
Cape Yerdes, with a black woman, who made 
flowers out of bird-feathers ; then he tacked some 
domestic adventure or other of the coal agent at 
Gibraltar on to a bit of gossip from Rio Janeiro ; 
and then passed at one jump from a breakfast to 
which he had been invited at Las Palnias in the 
Canaries to a meddlesome custom-house officer at 
Montevideo. I seemed to be listening to a marvel- 
lous creature who lived in three continents at once, 
and for whom distance and time had no existence. 
I remarked, too, that the people he met in the ports 
he visited were the only ones that remained fixed 
and distinct in his memory ; and the numberless 
others who came on board as passengers passed 
through his mind as they did through the ship, 
leaving but the vaguest remembrance behind them. 
His knowledge, too, of countries was sui geyieris, such 
as is had from looking at them through the door, as 
it were. For instance, he would know the price of 
vegetables in their markets, and have no idea of their 
history or form of government. So too with lan- 
guages. He knew only the substantives and verbs 
of a certain kind, the small change, so to speak, of 
conversation ; and had only one kind of grammar 
for them all. His judgments of ^vorldly matters 
were marked by the naivete of a grown-up college 
student who goes into society once a month or so ; 



B 13cUow ®cean» 147 

and liis acquirements and opinions were out of date, 
without connection and wholly one-sided, like the 
views he had of the cities he visited ; that is to say, 
sea views only. His last anecdote was about a little 
difficulty with a grain broker at Odessa, in 1868, re- 
sulting as usual in a handsome largesse of facers on 
his part. E ghe n^ lio diete, — " O I gave it him," he 
said ; and he wound up by giving his near neighbors 
at table a serious and well-considered eulogium of 
his wife ; a frugal home-keeping woman, full of 
good sense, and one whom he wished he had met 
and married ten years earlier. 

When we rose from the table he stopped at the 
door of the saloon, as he always did when he felt 
pretty well pleased with himself, to see the guests 
go out, saluting them gently with an air of grave 
benignity. Standing close to him, I was able to 
catch a severe glance which he cast at the blonde 
lady, whose conduct, it would seem, began to shock 
his rigorous ideas of maritime morality ; the more, 
perhaps, at that moment, when he was still warm 
from the eulogium he had been passing upon his 
wife. But the lady passed by smiling and saw 
nothing. At the next instant I was amazed to see 
him raise his cajD and bow with an air of great re- 
spect to the young lady from Mestre, who passed by 
on the arm of her aunt. When she was gone he 
turned to the bystanders and said gravely, Quella 
figgict 11 . . .aVe un angeo, — " That girl is an angel ! " 



148 ®n JBlue Mater. 

The heat being great at that hour, almost every- 
body remained on deck a h)ng time under shade of 
the awning; and I could mark better than the even- 
ing before the changes which the last few days had 
brought about in the relations between passengers. 
Such politeness ! Persons who during the first week 
seemed hardly able to endure one another were now 
in close and friendly conversation ; whereas others 
who had seemed tied together now avoided each 
other with disgust. A long trip is like a bit of 
separate existence, where friendships are born and 
ripen and die for us as quickly as the seasons follow 
one another for the ship, which passes in three weeks 
from spring to autumn. The certainty of parting 
before many days and of meeting never again en- 
courages confidence. The facility of going over to 
new friends on the first quarrel, and the ease with 
which we can pretend to be more than we are, or 
different from what we are, is a temptation to make 
new ties and to break out of old ones ; because 
everyone does the same by us, and we hardly have 
time to see the little trick when all is at an end. 
For this reason friendships on board ship dance the 
contradance and ^' set " to one and to another. 
Then, too, there is nothing like boredom to make 
men do mean things. On the tenth day there are 
those capable of humbly courting the conversation 
of certain others whom they had affronted the even- 
ing before with the most barefaced manifestations 



H ISeUow ©cean. 149 

of aversion. I saw, amongst other new pairs, the 
Neapolitan priest walking with a young Argentine 
who hitherto had bantered him more openly and 
more impertinently than all the rest, l)ut who noAv 
listened with visible deference to his harangues 
about einisiones fithiciarias y de nmnerario of some 
financial institution in Buenos Ayres ; and on the 
other side of the deck was that upstart of a mill- 
owner, who had somehow fastened upon the old 
Chilian, and who complained in a loud voice of the 
falta de Ihnpieza (lack of cleanliness) on board 
Italian ships, Avithout remarking that his inter- 
locutor wore upon his face an expression of disgust 
which meant that he would before long turn his 
back. But the great event Avas going on abaft the 
wheel. The husband of the Swiss lady was for the 
first time in colloquy with the Argentine deputy, to 
whom he appeared to be explaining the mechanism 
of the patent log ; and most comical was the pro- 
found attention which the listener seemed to pay, 
slowly turning his head now and then to glance 
at the sometime violatress of his quarters, who 
promenaded between the surly little Tuscan and 
the radiant tenor, all smiles and blandishments, 
but attentive the while to the other two, and well 
pleased, as may Ije supposed, at such unexpected 
overtures. The lady, as she walked up and down, 
passed before the little piano-player seated on one 
side ; and she in her turn looked the other from head 



I50 Qn Blue Mater* 

to foot with a long piercing glance, in whicli tliere 
was curiosity and sensual envy and all the im- 
prisoned passions of a captive animal ; and then her 
countenance resumed its usual expression of nunlike 
impassibility. Her mother, meanwhile, seated be- 
tween her and the lady of the brush, tore to pieces 
with eye and tongue a new lilac dress which the 
young bride had on. It was a little creased, there 's 
no denying it. Said young lady was hanging on 
her husband's arm, and standing with him Ijefore 
the beast-tamer, who seemed to be jesting in a way 
to embarrass her, and, lolling in a rocking-chair, 
ineffectually tried to medicine her somewhat ^^ ele- 
vated" condition with aromatic extracts. Mean- 
while the agent, commanding the whole with his 
detective glance, leaned against the mizzen-mast, his 
arms folded on his breast, with the air of a man who 
is awaiting a crisis of some kind. All the others, 
sitting or standing about, talked in a wearied way, 
yawning openly, while the yellow sea made a suit- 
able background for those gossippy, sleepy faces. 
Amongst many pictures, driven out each by the 
next, which the deck presented during the voyage, 
this one only, painted in mud color, has remained, 
I do not know why, fixed and vivid in my memory. 
But suddenly the scene became alive and the rep- 
resentation a real farce. The Tuscan quickly, almost 
rudely, quitted the company and went straight for- 
ward as if with a view to indemnification among the 



H lUellow (S)cean» 151 

ladies there. A moment later the Swiss lady and 
tlie tenor separated, be to sit down and make pi'e- 
tence of reading a book, she to join her husband, the 
Argentine retiring at once with a diplomatic salute. 
The agent ap[)eared at my elbow like a ghost. " Now 
mark," he said, '' there is a military movement going 
on. You, who are a writer, ought to note these 
things. The Tuscan has retreated, the tenor is 
held in reserve. The lady is manoeuvring in face of 
the enemy. Oh, by Jove ! they played it on me yes- 
terday, but they shall not to-day." In fact, the lady 
was coaxing her husband most outrageously ; she 
passed her arm through his; she whispered in his 
ear; she seemed to ask explanations of the patent 
log. And the face of the long-haired professor was 
a sight to see. There was a whole system of phi- 
losophy there, doubtless of old date with him. He 
half-closed his eyes like a drowsy cat, and twisting 
his whole face to one side, showed the tip of his 
tongue with a leer of indescribable facetiousness 
through which there shone all the while a flash of 
mockery, as if in his heart he were laughing at her 
himself, the other, the others, the whole world. 
Meanwhile the tenor had disappeared. The lady 
passed her hand over her eyes and covered with her 
fan an ill-acted yawn, as if to show her husband 
that she wished to go below and have a nap. '' Look 
out !" said the agent, "now for the decisive move- 
ment." The words were hardly out of his mouth 



152 ©n :fi3lue Mater* 

when the lady left her liiisbaiid and, slowly, with a 
sleepy-looking face, crossed the deck to go below. 
'' Ha ! " said the agent, " she has chosen her time 
well ; there won't be so much as a dog down there 
in that oven, but there 's a heaven above us all the 
same." And down he went. Not one of these 
movements had escaped tlnit rattlesnake of a mother 
of the piano-player. She whispered her little re- 
marks in the ear of her neighbor, the lady of the 
brush, and both rose as one woman. But it w\as of 
no use. The dear Swiss lady came up again, mask- 
ins: her vexation with a sweet smile and brino;ino; a 
book, as if that were what she had gone down for; 
and two minutes later up came the tenor by another 
stairway, sol-faing and looking out at these a with an 
indifference that meant fury. A few paces behind 
him came the agent, filled with delight, and signing 
to me from afar with open hand and nose-touching 
thuml). "How beautiful the sea is!" said the 
tenor, ranging up alongside of me. 

The sea was detestable, but he was a most divert- 
ing character. I made his acquaintance as we came 
up with the Canaries, and had chatted with him in 
the evening two or three times. He was about 
thirty-five, but looked younger ; had the face of a 
tailor's foreman, little blond nuistaches twisted up- 
wards, eyes that said, "It is I !" affected utterance, 
Almaviva walk, clothes from Bocconi Brothei's. He 
looked at the horizon as if the Atlantic were an enor- 



H ]l)eUow Ocean. 153 

mous pitful of applaiiders calling him before the 
curtain. He held forth upon geography, literature, 
politics, and art with a kind of cunning ease, always 
on the brink of some hideous blunder, and stopping 
short after a cautious look at his interlocutor. In 
literature and politics he had a curious trick. All of 
a sudden, while talking, he would, without any ap- 
parent pretext, fix his eyes on the horizon and sol- 
emnly exclaim, " William Shakespeare ! " passing his 
hand over his forehead as if in thought too deep for 
utterance ; but it was only a name that came up to 
the surface like a bubble of air ; oi', perhaps, the talk 
would fall upon some historical personage. Napoleon 
I., for example. " Ah ! " he would exclaim with a 
twist of his face, " for the love of heaven, don't talk 
to me of Napoleon I.," as if he had within his own 
brain a mighty treasure of original, well-weighed, im- 
mutable ideas upon the subject which were not to 
be called in question. And not a word more would 
he say. Finally, to sum up the whole vast system 
of his ideas and intellectual sympathies, he used to 
remark, " I keep three books on the stand by my bed 

at night, — Dante, Faust, and ." The first time 

he said the Bible, but the next time he forgot and 
mentioned the Alf/sterie,^ of " the People " of Eugene 
Sue. On board shi[), however, I never saw any book 
in his hand exce[)t The Lo-ves of the Empress Eugenie. 
One last trait : He said he was a volunteer with 
Garibaldi ; but when it came to facts, he never men- 



154 On Blue Mater* 

tioued any campaign in particular, but spoke of all 
those wars with a kind of misty generality, as if 
they belonged to remote antiquity, to the age of 
fable. On the whole, a jolly fellow enough. He 
never got angry except when speaking of a certain 
Bolognese impresario, the hatred of his life, as it 
would seem; and he always used the same phrase, 
" I '11 have his liver ! " ( Glifarb sputm^e il cuore !) On 
the day in question he did not feel so much like it. 

After two o'clock the deck was left to itself. The 
tenor went down to warble at the piano, the pro- 
fessor went on the midship-deck to hold forth upon 
science to the "lower orders," the Argentines to 
play cards, the others to bathe, to sleep, or to get 
their things off. I followed that day the young 
lady from Mestre, as she went with her aunt to 
make her usual visit to the peasant family, carrying 
her usual little parcel of fruit and sweetmeats in 
her hand. I could perceive the instant she set foot 
among them how strong a hold she already had 
upon the feelings of these people. The roughest 
peasants rose to their feet as soon as they saw^ her, 
and all looked hard at the blue veins of that fine 
neck, at her thin hands, and her large black cross 
standing out upon the sea-green dress, which marked 
no curves but was not without its grace. Not a trace 
of any evil thought was to be seen upon the counte- 
nance of the boldest and most viperous woman who 
talked of her when she had passed. And it was re- 



H l!)eUow Qccmu 155 

spect not so mucli for the lady as for tlie sad doom 
which they saw written in her face, and for the 
sweet resignation with which she bore it, withont, 
at the same time, losing the kindness and innocent 
charm which is born of a happy love of life. One 
word I heard, murmured behind her as she passed, 
which made me tremble for her, should she have 
caught it, — " That 's consumption." But it did not 
reach her ear. Some little boys came towards her, 
and she patted their cheeks as she gave them almonds 
and raisins. An emigrant inadvertently put his foot 
upon the skirt of her dress and tore it from the 
gathers. While it was being set to rights the doctor 
came up, and all three went down to the sick bay. 

I followed them. They were going to visit the 
Piedmontese contadino, ill of pleurisy. The poor 
man was much worse. Stretched there in his dark 
berth, with his long, gray beard, which made liim 
look still more gaunt, he was like a corpse lying 
in a coffin from which one of the sides had been 
taken out. As the young lady, whom he had often 
seen before, came near, his mouth quivered piteously, 
as those of children and greatly enfeebled invalids 
do when they are going to cry. And he murmured 
with a lump in his throat : A^ m rincress per me' 
field! — ^' Ah, my poor son ! " 

It was plain that these words affected the young 
lady deeply. She replied at once, with assumed 
frankness, but in a broken voice : '^ No, no, don't 



156 On mine Mater. 

say that. Yoii '11 see your son. You are better 
to-day. Don't lose the address. Where have 
you put it? [It was in his coat-pocket at the foot 
of the bed.] Very well. The doctor will see to it. 
Would you like to have me take care of it and give 
it you when you get well and reach America ? Shall 
I take charge of it ? " 

The old man nodded, Yes. She bent down, 
felt in the coat-pocket, drew out the little packet, 
found the paper which she knew well, folded it 
with great care, and placed it in a handsome snake- 
skin case, which she closed and put in her pocket. 
The sick man followed all these movements with 
the greatest interest and satisfaction, and then mur- 
mured, in a thin little voice : 

^' A Ve trap grassiosa, trap grassiosay 

" Cheer up," she said, giving him her hand. '' I '11 
come again soon. Good-bye. Courage ! " 

The old man took her hand and fervently kissed 
it several times, while big tears ran down his face. 
He followed her witli his eyes to the door, and then 
let his head drop back upon the pillow in utter de- 
spair, as if he ^vere never to raise it up again. 

Tlie young lady went with her aunt on deck 
again and moved towards her friends, the family of 
peasants, who were packed into their little corner 
between the turkey-coop and the great hogshead 
like a nestful of birds. But they had given that 
nutshell of a place a sort of homelike air already 



H fellow ©ccan* 157 

by hanging a bit of looking-glass on the cask, and 
stretching a towel to keep off the sun. Tlie head 
of one of the twins served as a rest for the father's 
two hands, and the hair of the othc^r was being at- 
tended to l)y the mothei* who, rounder than ever, 
wielded a fragment of fine-tootli cond), Avdiile the 
girl was washing a handkerchief in a little pot of 
water [)laced on a battered trunk by way of ta})le. 
As the young lady came near the father rose and 
took his pipe out of his mouth, while the whole six 
faces smiled. I heard a word or two. 

Senipre hen f — " Getting on nicely ? " 

Come iJio vol^ — ^'Yes, thank God," — said the 
peasant. Ma la ga paura die ghe sugeda prima de 
arivar^ — " But I 'm afraid it will happen l)efore we 
get in." And then the woman, with an anxions 
face : Credehi ela^ pavongina^ die l ghe far a pagar 
anca a la el quarto de posto ? — " Do you think, 
padroncina, that they will make ns })ay for a quarter- 
place for him ? " 

It must have been a very funny question, for I 
saw foi' the first time a smile on the face of the 
young lady, instantly suppressed, however, as she 
signed with her head that she did not think that 
they would ; then, taking a kerchief of red avooI out 
of her pocket she gave it to the cliild, saying, 
Oiapa, 'vissare, ti te lo 'ineUerd do inverno-cpuando 
ml — ''Take this, my pretty, you can wear it next 
winter, — when I ." 



158 Qn Mm Maten 

But wliat in the world was going on overhead ? 
The sky had grown dark in a moment, the clouds 
settled down almost upon the mastheads, and even- 
ing seemed to have come at one stride. On both 
sides of the ship nothing was seen but dense clouds, 
and a little bit of gray, ruffled sea which set us roll- 
ing violently and covered the deck with spray. We 
all thought it meant a gale, but the officer of the 
watch shouted, from the bridge, " A rain squall ; 
below, all of you!" He had hardly spoken when 
down came the roaring rain in bucketfuls, flooding 
the deck and drenching everyone. Then the women 
all began to scream ; there was a mad flight to get 
under cover, a splashing through streams and pools 
and rivulets of water, a headlong rush for the 
hatches, as if the shi23 were going to pieces. But 
the companion-ways were narrow, and there was a 
jam ; there were furious elbo wings, struggles to get 
in first, a cursing and a swearing as the rain in- 
creased and sluiced them all and dashed against the 
glazed deckhouses, soaking and washing everything 
about. The hellish confusion made me think with 
terror what would be the consequences of a panic on 
board. But it was only the first greeting of the 
torrid zone, of that great irrigator of the world in 
which we had been sailing for two days. And it 
lasted but a few moments. The gloomy vault of 
clouds lifted and, breaking away here and there, let 
in upon the dark waters, still lashed in places with 



H l^ellow (S^cean* 



159 



sheets of rain, the strangest spots of light, the most 
wondrous streaks, livid, white, green, golden, giving 
the ocean the appearance as of many seas joined to- 
gether, each with its own luminary, — a weird and 
sombre image of a world thrown into confusion as 
its end approaches. 




CHAPTER IX 



CHAEACTERS IN THE STEERAGE 




HERE were more rain squalls the 
next day, and, thanks to one of 
them, I had an opportunity, for 
the first time, of speaking with 
the young lady from Mestre, by 
whose side I found myself in 
the covered way on the starboard side, where, already 
drenched and shivering with cold, she had taken 
I'efuge from the showei*. Her first words, the fii'st 
play of her features, heard and seen thus close at 
hand in the midst of the crowd that pressed upon 
us, revealed her nature to me more than any act of 
her's had hitherto done. A certain quivering of lier 
pale lips and an intense trembling in her voice 
showed there was an ardent nature beneath her com- 
posed and gentle demeanoi*; deep pity for human 
sufferinc:, the sicrht of which made her suifer in her 
turn, and a real love for those who suffered; giving 
rise to some idea of religious socialism which was 

1 60 



Cbaracters in tbe Steerage* i6i 

confused in her mind, but flamed up clear in her heart 
and consumed her being. For the first time in her 
life she saw much suffering and many sorrows in a 
mass, so to speak, all real, palpitating, within her 
very reach ; and the depths of her soul were stirred. 
I did not quite follow her course of thought, for, 
owing to weakness, or the difficulty of expressing 
herself, she never finished her sentences, the last few 
words of which were lost as if carried away by 
the wind. " We do not do enough for those who 
suffer," she said, " and yet — there is nothing else to 
do in the world — there it all is." If her strength 
had been sufficient she would most certainly have 
devoted herself to some mission of charity until she 
died ; as was plainly declared by the expression of 
her delicate mouth and her resolute brow, lightly 
shadowed from time to time by the thought of 
human selfishness and human woe, which in her 
short life she must have I'ather divined than realized. 
And in spite of wide dissimilarity, there came into 
my mind as I gazed upon her the white raised face 
of one of those Nihilist girls which Stepniak paints, 
eaten up by the zeal of their creed and ready to 
die for it. She spoke in a voice of inexpressible 
sweetness, with her eyes fixed on the horizon, while 
she gently fingered the black cross that hung at her 
neck ; and the alternate gasps of her infant-like 
breath were the more pitiful when contrasted with 
the mighty life which the ocean wafted into her 



i62 ®n Blue Mater^ 

face. Did she realize her condition ? I judged that 
she did, from her indifference to all those about 
her. She lived as if in another world, confounding 
one fellow-traveller with another and asking con- 
stantly, Who ? Which ? as if it were an effort to re- 
member. And was she really resigned ? I had a 
chance to judge of this a short time after when she 
was talking with the beautiful Genoese girl to whom 
she had given a pretty little leathern housewife as a 
present. I looked in her eyes, as she fastened them 
upon the girl, to see whether that resplendent youth 
and beauty were awakening any passing sentiment 
of envy at the sad contrast, any feeling of yearning 
or of pain. None whatever. She was resigned be- 
yond a doubt. Love and the desire of life had gone 
before, and were already in the tomb. 

At that moment I heard behind me a brisk rust- 
ling as of skirts, and a musical laugh. It was the 
blonde lady, dressed in blue, her face discreetly 
powdered, and fragrant as a nosegay. She was 
coming for the first time to visit the fore-deck ; in 
company wnth the first officer, — a stout, fresh- 
colored fellow, a couple of yards high, and with 
whom she seemed to be already tolerably familiar. 
She passed along, chatting gaily, and looking about 
her; but it was plain that she saw exactly nothing; 
that for her forward and aft, engine, emigrants, 
wretchedness, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediter- 
ranean Sea were all matters that concerned her not ; 



Cbaracters in the Steera^e^ 163 

tiiey did not distract her for a single instant from the 
gay consciousness of being a pretty, charming woman 
in the free exercise of her function. I could mark, 
too, how sharp a sense the men of the " people " 
have even for women who are '^ gentle folk." They 
had never seen her, but they snuffed her from afar, 
and took good care, the sly rogues, not to move as 
she passed that her blue dress might brush their 
knees. They made, when she had gone by, the 
unspellable sound with tongue and lips, that one 
does who SNvallo^v^s a delicious oyster; they kissed 
their palms with a meaning laugh. But they moved 
sullenly out of the way for the lady of the brush, 
who came behind alone, carrying a little parcel. 
For a couple of days she had taken to aping the 
young lady from Mestre, and, like her, would give 
fruit and sugar plums to the children. 

But alas ! alas ! she looked, with her sour smile, like 
a schoolmistress, and, as she offered the goodies, would 
keep a sharp lookout lest anyone should touch her. 
From head to foot she was the poor little middle- 
class nobody, full of envy of those above her, and 
of scorn for those below^ her ; ready for any mean- 
ness, so only she might be seen with a marcliesa^ and 
capable of taking the bread out of her children's 
mouths so that she might sweep along the sidewalk 
in a velvet dress. The little creatures took what 
she offered, but the looks of their elders expressed 
the most cordial aversion. As my eye followed her^ 



r64 On Blue Mater* 

moving slowly along in the midst of the press I saw 
that " decayed gentlewoman " of the third class 
whom, Avith her daughter, the commissary had 
pointed out some days before ; her feeble health 
now feebler, and looking most pitiably poor in her 
black silk dress, all soiled and torn. There are 
some small humiliations in misfortune which are 
worse than misfortune itself. Both mother and 
daughter timidly, after much hesitation, and looking 
about them as if ashamed, went to the fresh-water 
tank and bent down like animals at a trough, to 
drink from the iron spigot as the others did ; but, 
seeing the Swiss lady coming that way again, they 
drew back and, with downcast looks, disappeared 
in the throng. Some emigrants, who had marked 
this scene, laughed a loud, mocking laugh. The 
blonde lady meanwhile, at a sign from the first 
officer, stopped to look at the Genoese, whose fame 
as the "virtuous beauty" had no doubt reached her 
ears. She seemed to think the girl beautiful; but 
I saw in her eye an expression of pity, the pity with 
which a bold and fortunate operator would regard a 
rich simpleton who was keeping a splendid capital 
idle in his safe. Then she moved on, saluting with 
a wave of he]' hand her husband, who was above on 
the hurricane-deck examining the structure of the 
red side-light. 

That poor Genoese girl ! Tlie commissary, on his 
way to look at a broken spigot, told me a pitiful 



Cbaracters in the Steeraae^ 165 

story. Around that good and beautiful creature 
there had closed a circle of envious aversion Avhich 
gave her no peace. All the aspirants whom she had 
declined to look at or had repelled with her disgust 
had become her enemies, and her firin and dignified 
manner had made them fairly hate her. They said 
she was too stupid for anything {stnpida come una 
Scarpa)^ apiece of bloodless flesh, all hands and feet, 
— and such teeth ! To the anger of the men was 
added the jealousy of the women, furious at seeing 
a hundred adoring '' sapheads " about her. The 
Bolognese, especially, and the tAvo opera girls looked 
as if they would like to boil her alive. They had 
begun by sarcastically calling her '' the princess " ; 
then they had said that that nunlike modesty of hers 
was all put on, and finally had circulated the most 
atrocious calumnies regarding her. Impossible to 
describe the foulness of the talk that went on, the 
vileness of the remarks made upon her person, pro- 
voking insolent laughs whose significance there was 
no mistaking. They would have insulted her open- 
ly, perhaps have laid violent hands upon her, for no 
other purpose than to humiliate her, but for the 
authorities. The very cook was furious, and showed 
at the window of his stronghold the countenance of 
an offended sultan. For two or three days the little 
Tuscan in the after-cabin had been buzzing about 
her, and had at last got into conversation with her 
father; whereon all that scum of the earth had said 



1 66 ©n Blue Mater^ 

it was a bargain, a settled matter, but suddenly had 
ceased tlieir talk, and tliat without anyone knoAving 
why. The only one who remained faithful, in love 
to the very marrow of his bones, poor fellow, was 
that weakly youth with the leathern bag around his 
neck, — a "limed soul" that did not struggle to be 
free, a Modenese, a bookkeeper lj>y occupation, to 
whom an ugly, red-haired, pimply, short-sighted 
creature in the third class had taken an open fancy, 
but he would not look at her. His passion, which 
had almost crazed his brain, was the jest of every- 
one. They brayed out heart-rending sighs behind 
his back ; they sang : 

" Too small, too small 
To make love art thou ! " 

and all the rest of it; but he was so dead in love 
that he took no heed, staying in the same place for 
hours, his elbow on his knee and his chin in his 
hand, fastening his gaze upon her as in an ecstasy ; 
happy when those clear blue eyes, as they looked 
around, encountered his own by chance. He was 
there wdiile the commissary was talking of him, im- 
movable, with a face and look which showed that 
for one word he would have given bag, pen, pass- 
port, America, the universe. It was pitiful to see. 
He was likely to lose his head and make an utter ass 
of himself before the voyage was over — that was 
clear. 



Cbaracters in tbe Steerage* 167 

This then was our " innamorato " ; a kind of person 
never lacking on board ship, the commissary told 
me ; and sometimes there is a variety of them, men 
really in love, that is to say ; the others do not count. 
But in the Galileo there was quite a collection of 
other characters still more queer and original, each 
one of whom had in those twelve days come to the 
front and acquired his own celebrity in the little 
republic of the fore-deck. There were jovial souls 
and there were serious men. TJiese last preferred 
the forecastle Avhich was a kind of Aventine Mount, 
where all the turbulent and atrabilious spirits got 
together. The most popular among these was the 
old Tuscan in the green jacket who had shaken his 
list at Genoa on the evening of our sailing. This 
man was a born devil. From morning till night he 
harangued, in a hoarse voice, his threatening fore- 
finger in the air ; and his following increased from 
day to day. He would have liked to raise a social 
revolution on board the Galileo ; he inveighed 
against the signori on the poop-deck, urged the 
passengers to protest against the dirt of the sleeping- 
places and the uncleanness of the food ; sometimes 
by way of example hurling his ration from him and 
calling down vengeance upon the cooker}^ His 
audience applauded but ate their food ; while he, in 
a fury, cried out that they were all " slaves " and 
every one of them was " bought." 

There was, however, one who did not bow down be- 



i68 



Qn JSlue mater. 



fore lilm, a little, old, dried-iip man, with a black tuft 
on Ms forehead and a pair of black eyes like a hawk, 

who said he was a 
smuggler. This per- 
son chose, likewise, to 
cherish the reputation 
of a great criminal, 
loaded with the guilt 
of a thousand myste- 
rious murders, and 
ready for anything. 
Perhaps no more than 
a kind of Captain 
Fracasse in crime, but 
skilful in playing his 
part, so that he was 
universally feared, 
though he had not 
hurt a hair of any- 
body's head ; and the 
women pointed him 
out, saying he had a 
long dagger under his 
jacket, and would cer- 
tainly do something 
dreadful before the 
voyage was over. He walked amongthe throng with 
folded arms and head held hio:li, and did not choose 
that anyone should fix an eye upon him. If anyone 




Cbaracters in tbe Steerage^ 169 

did so he would stop and stare at the rash man, as who 
should say, " Are you tired of your life ? " But from 
fear or prudence they all turned their heads another 
way. Tliis pretence was, of course, necessary to his 
reputation as a dangerous man; hut beyond it he 
did no harm to a living soul, and entertained for the 
old Tuscan the usual scorn of the warrior for the 
politician. 

The third in the triad on the forecastle was that 
(pieer fellow of a mountebank with long hair and 
tattooed arms, whose voice no man had heard, so 
that everyone said he was dumb. This character 
^vould stand for fi\ e honrs at a stretch perfectly 
motionless at the extreme fore-part of the ship, his 
green eyes raised to heaven as if he were gazing at 
a star invisil)le to other mortals, and profoundly 
immersed in superhuman contemplations. 

The jolly fellows, ou the contrary, assembled on 
the midship-deck, which offered inoi'e space for buf- 
foonery, and was like the open square of a village ; 
a lounging place convenient for groups and gossip. 
Up here in a corner on the port side close by the 
bridge there was chatting and uproar from rise of 
morn till set of sun. The buffoon of the company 
was a peasant from Monferrato, the one who had 
made that scandalous surmise about the leathern 
purse of the Bolognese ; a quarrelsome little figure 
without any nose. The whole third class knew how 
he had lost it — in fact, a drunken carabineer,^ whom 

* Police officer — so called ; "partly military, partly municipal. 



I70 Qn JSlue XKHater* 

he, reeling ripe himself, had provoked one evening 
in the street of his village, had cut it off with a blow 
of his sabre. But the fan of it all was that, next 
morning, hoping to make something out of this nasal 
mutilation, he had gone to the authorities, to whom 
the more prudent carabineer had carefully refrained 
from making any report, and had been rewarded for 
his trouble with much summonsing before the courts, 
several days in jail, and a fine of one hundred lire. 
This fellow had mistaken his vocation. He was a 
born clown. He could thrust out his mouth like a 
beast's muzzle; he danced all sorts of grotesque steps 
of his own invention ; he mimicked people in the 
most amazing way; and when any officer of the ship 
passed by, would salute him with a mock respect 
that was altogether killing. 

Next after him in renown was a little man with a 
bald head and a huge sty on one eye ; an ex-porter, 
who always kept near him a cage with a couple of 
blackbirds, of which he took great care, expecting to 
sell them in Buenos Ay res for eighty lire apiece — a 
common speculation enough. He owed his popularity 
to a treasure which he had inherited from some rela- 
tive, a large album full of nasty caricatures, charades, 
and anecdotes which, read with the page doubled, 
w^ere passages from the lives of the saints, otherwise 
devilish beastliness. He always had around him a 
group of liquorish dilettanti, who read the same filth 
a hundred times a day, I'olling over the benches and 



172 On Blue Mater. 

laughing until they cried, — while he held his head 
high, like an applauded actor, and was happy. 

And then there was a third, a cook in a tavern ; a 
very usual type on board ship, the wiseacre who has 
been to America and, in virtue of this, assumes a kind 
of learned superiority over his fellow-travellers, ex- 
plains in his own way the wonders of sea and sky, 
holds forth upon naval architecture, talks as familiarly 
of the New World as of his own house, lavishes ad- 
vice right and left, and calls everyone who does not 
go along with him a clodhopper and a blockhead. 
The commissary came upon him one day as, apple in 
hand, he was uttering explanatory absurdities, fit to 
stop the ship, about the rotation of the earth. Be- 
tween whiles he played the ocarina} 

Finally, there was a Venetian barber, who enjoyed 
a proud pre-eminence from his ability to imitate a cur 
of low degree {can da pagliaia — " yaller dog ") bay- 
ing the moon in a lamentable howl which lacerated 
the nerves and would have deceived any dog in Italy. 
But then every specialist there had been unearthed 
and forced to give proof of his skill ; one old gar- 
dener, amongst others, would squat down behind a 
cattle pen and imitate the furious panting of one for 
whom I cannot waits ii]^on I would with unsurpass- 
able perfection ; he was a real artist, they said, and 
they set great store by him. They played at 
draughts, at cross and pile (tit-tat-to), at lotto, and 

^ Kind of flageolet made of earthenware. 



Cbaracters in tbe Steerage* 173 

they sang iov hours together. They even played at 
blind-man's-buff like great gray-headed hobblede- 
hoys, and at hot cockles like little children. The grand 
spectacle, however, was when the tattooed mounte- 
bank, fired with professional enthusiasm, came from 
forward and walked about on his hands or did the 
wheel or the serpent trick, amidst a tempest of ap- 
plause, his countenance all the while quite grave and 
sad, as if he were doing penance ; and then went 
back where he came from without a w^ord. Still, all 
this merriment looked rather forced than spontane- 
ous; these men seemed to seize with fury upon the 
slightest occasion to stun themselves with clatter 
as when one gets drunk on purpose to drive away 
sorrowful memories and grim forebodings. They 
would throw themselves, a hundred at a time, against 
the bulwark, or rush together in a whirling circle 
with shouts and cries and whistling and cat-calls 
and cock-a-doodle-dooing that was heard from one 
end of the ship to the other, making the very officers 
look round at them, and all this for no better reason 
than a hat blown overboard or a nose blackened by 
a fall against the coal bunker. And when an un- 
protected girl or woman passed among them there 
was a clacking of tongues and a chirruping and a 
general exhibition of onomatopoeia which made the 
unhappy victim take to her heels at once. The 
black nurse of the Brazilian family, above all, when 
she went to her place in the third class to eat or 



174 ®n :fiBlue Mater. 

sleep, aroused, witli her white eyeballs and her grin- 
mng teeth, such a chorus of brutal love-strains that 
it was like the yelling of an excited menagerie. 

And we of the first chiss had our little ways too. 
Would there have been, after all, any very great dif- 
ference between the fore-deck and the poop? And 
if the varnish of culture and good manners had been 
taken off from — those who had it — how easily could 
we have matched in our part of the ship the types 
and conversation of the third class. It is quite won- 
derful how much they knew of us, how they hit 
upon each one's weak points, and how nearly right 
they were in their gossip about us behind our backs. 
It all came round to us again in one way or another. 
They knew from the stewards and the servants some- 
thing of the character and habits of everyone, and 
were posted as to our daily doings ; just as those 
living in the garrets know about the tenants of 
the handsome lodgings below. What they did not 
know they guessed, and they made their remarks 
upon everything. They gave everyone a nickname, 
and mimicked everybody's gait and voice. Often 
enouo^h, when walkincr amono; them, we would turn 
suddenly round and surprise three or four of them 
winking at one another, or composing their faces 
to preternatural seriousness after a mocking grin. 
These were our Caudine Forks. 

This very evening the whole ship was delighted 
by an exquisite joke practised upon one of these 



Cbaracters in tbe Steera^e^ 



175 



fellows, a third-class passenger wbo liad paid the 
difference and dined in the second cabin, hut passed 
his time among the gossips of the midship-deck. 
He was a little man, neither old nor young, with a 
face as wrinkled as a roasted apple ; a good fellow 
enough, dressed like a verger, and giving himself 
the airs of a well-to-do citizen, but simple and credu- 
lous as a child. He was much coaxed and petted 
as being the possessor of a case of wine which he 
was taking to his brother 
in America, and which he 
guarded most jeal- 



ously as a sacred 
treasure against the 
many snares that 
were laid for it. 
That morning, go- 
ing on deck, his at- 
tention had been 
attracted by the tel- 
egraphic dial which 
sends signals from 
the bi'idge to the 
engine-room. The 
third officer, who 
dined with him at 
table, being near by, 
was asked what that bit of mechanism might be. 
'' That is the telegraph," said the other. 




'"tofs attention ba^ been attvactet> 
b>2 tbe tclegrapbic l>ial." 



176 On JSlue Mater^ 

The little man was amazed. " The telegraph ! " 
he exclaimed, " to telegraph with ! " 

The officer caught on in a moment. He w^as a 
Genoese, as sharp as a steel trap (fino cofne la t?'iaca), 
a masterly practical joker, and always quite serious. 

"To telegraph," he said, "of course. — What for? 
Why, the fact is that by means of a travelling wire 
we are always in connection with the great hollows 
under the ocean, and we send news to the owners 
every four hours." 

The little man expressed his admiration, and 
then, as an idea occurred to him, timidly I'emarked : 

" Ah ! yes ! I suppose that it is used only for the 
ship." 

" As a s]3ecial favor," said the officer, " passengers 
are sometimes allowed to use it." 

" Oh, in that case " said the other easrerlv, " I 
should like to send a despatch to my wife." 

He hesitated a moment as he thought of the ex- 
pense, but was told that exception would be made 
in his favor, and he should pay only the usual tariff. 
So he wrote the despatch : " Am well ; sea smooth ; 
half-way ; many kisses," etc., etc. And asked if his 
wife could answer. Certainly she could answer. 
" Because I know," he went on, " she would go with- 
out her dinner rather than not send me a word." 
And was going to pay ; but the officer said he must 
see how much it would all come to ; he might pay 
that afternooD, about four o'clock, when he came 
back to see if thei'e wei'e any answer. 



Characters in tbe Steerage. 177 

The poor fellow went away well pleased, leaving 
the paper. Came back at three — nothing. At half- 
past, still nothing. But at four there were twelve 
blessed words : " Thanks ; well ; God bless you ; I 
pi'ay for you ; come back soon." 

Ovei'joyed he reads the despatch twice over, 
kisses the paper, wants to pay. " Poh, poh," said 
the officer, " it is not worth mentionins;. 1 '11 have 
it go in with the others. Just open one of those 
bottles of yours, and that will make it square." 
^' Why not. By all means, we '11 open one or two 
and have a good time. What a thing science is, and 
what things it can do ! " In short, a couple of 
bottles were opened at table and absorbed ; but the 
poor dupe got so very happy that he opened a third, 
a fourth, and so on, until the case, up to that mo- 
ment so carefully guarded, was quite empty. The 
news meanwhile had spread ; and when he came 
out on deck for a constitutional, excited, flushed, 
triumphant, he was received with a carnival of yells. 
At first he did not make out why they were making 
fun of him ; but when he did understand, instead of 
being thunderstruck, as they expected, he laughed 
for pure pity of their ignorance. " Fools, dolts, 
idiots, noodles, asses ! " he shouted, as he turned 
away towards his friends of the second cabin, happy 
and quite unmoved in the midst of a perfect chorus 
of barking and mewing and chirping and crowing. 

And this scene occui'red just before we saw one of 



178 *S>ii JBlue Mater. 

the most amazing sights which sea and sky can offer 
in the regions of the tropics. 

The thick veil of clouds which had enveloped us 
for three days had been rent a short time before sun- 
set, and the sun went down into the sea like an 
enormous ruby, sending along the tranquil waters a 
long streak of purple like a ton-ent of lava which 
was rushing to burn the Galileo up. And when his 
disk touched the horizon, the clouds, fired with 
brilliant colors, began to move majestically ; present- 
ing shape after shape so wondrous that we stood 
transfixed ; and, as each dream-like contour vanished, 
cried out, '' Alas ! that it should go ! " There were 
mountains of gold, with rivers of blood that fell from 
their over-hanging crags ; huge fountains of molten 
metal ; mighty canopies lighted from below by a 
gleam so glorious that as one gazed, the mind was 
troubled with a half-sense of terror; one almost 
expected to see the last vision of Dante,^ as: 

" Within the deep and luminous subsistence 
Of the High Liglit appeared to us three circles, 
Of threefold color and of one dimension " 

seeming to be " painted with our eflfigy " and before 
w^hich 

" Vigor failed the lofty fantasy." 

^ Paradiso, xxxiii., 115 et seq. Longfellow's Trans. 




CHAPTER X 



THE WOMEN S CABIN 




ND still ocean, ocean, ocean ! At 
times one could almost imagine 
that tlie land had disappeared 
from the face of the earth, and 
that we were to go on sailing, 
sailing, and never touch it more. 
The water was not yellow as it was the day before, 
but seemed one huge sheet of lead ; while the sky 
was white, and the sun ^vas white, and everything 
on board our ship scorched us as we touched it. 
But the baking heat was not the worst. There was 
a waft of foul and pestilential air from the men's 
cabin which, rising through the open hatchway, 
reached us on the after-deck ; — a dreadful stench that 
moved deep compassion as one thought that it came 
from human beings, and hideous terror as one consid- 
ered what would happen if disease broke out. And 
yet we were told that there were no more passengers 
than the law allows. Each had his allotted number 



179 



i8o On Blue Mater* 

of cubic feet. But Avhat has that to do with it if 
one cannot breathe ? The law is wrong. It allows 
on board the Italian steamers a whole third more of 
the tonnage to be occupied than in the English and 
American ships ; and it does not have its officers con- 
stantly by to see that the report of " all right " made 
by the police at sailing is justified throughout the 
voyage ; that there be not, for instance, at another 
port, more passengers shipped than there is room for; 
that healthy passengers be not put into rooms re- 
served for the sick ; or that sleeping-places be not 
improvised on the open deck. How much there is 
still to be done for those noble boats that gleam like 
princes' palaces as they sail out of harbor ! In most 
of them the foremast hands and the firemen are 
lodged like beasts ; the sick bay is a dog hole ; the 
places that should he cleanest turn the stomach ; and 
for fifteen hundi'ed steerage passengers there is — not 
one bath. Those hygienists who pretend to settle 
the space that each man ought to have, may say 
what they like; human flesh cannot be crowded 
like that, and it is no excuse to urge that things are 
far better than in former times. The case, now, to- 
day, is one that moves to pity and to indignation. 

Meanwhile, as the thermometer went up, the com- 
missary's work increased and his annoyances multi- 
plied. The chief est of these was the cai-e of the 
women's cabin, into which he had to pass, night and 
day, to keep order, ancl to see after cleanliness. In 



Ube Momeu'5 Cabin, iSi 

fact, without taking his work into account at all, 
the mere sight of what he had to look at would have 
been enough to disgust any man with the task this 
gentleman had undertaken. Imagine two stories 
below decks, like two huge entresols^ about as light 
as an ordinary cellar ; in each story three tiers of 
berths all round about and down the middle ; and, 
what with women and children, weaned and un- 
weaned, about four hundred people to occupy each 
story, the thermometer standing at 90° Fahrenheit ! 
Here, in a lower berth would be a woman far gone 
in the family way, with a two ■ years - old child. 
Above her an old woman of seventy, and in the 
upper berth a girl in the flower of her age. Then a 
Calabrese cafona^ or herds woman, next her a poor 
lady who had fallen into poverty ; farther on a city 
adventuress who used cosmetics under cover of the 
darkness ; and not far off a God - fearing young 
peasant w^oman who slept with her rosary in her 
hand. Going down there by night there were seen 
hanging out of the bed-places gray heads and blonde 
tresses, nursing children rolled up in their bandages, 
the horrible shins of the old, and the shapely limbs 
of the young ; a foul heap of shawls and gowns and 
petticoats of all imaginable and possible colors, 
natural and acquired, — like banners of the unnum- 
bered hosts of wretchedness ; while on the deck were 
orderless piles of boots and shoes and wooden san- 
dals and gaiters and slippers and stockings, which — 



i82 Qn JSlue Maten 

it was frightful to remember — were only so many 
heaps of quarrel and dispute all ready for the mor- 
row at the hour of rising. There were many who 
did not sleep. 

The commissary went about amid an unbroken 
hum of talk, varied by suppi'essed laughs, by wails, 
by the sighs of gills and the groans of women over- 
come by the heat ; and the murmurs of poor old 
creatures who, unable to close an eye, were mum- 
bling Pater-Nosters and Ave Marias. At times he 
was called aside by a suppressed voice and had to 
bend over or rise on tiptoe to hear a complaint 
or a protest. *' Signor Commissario," said one in 
his ear, "please do something — that girl in No. 
25 is a scandal and a shame. I 've two little boys 
down here ; do make her behave herself and remem- 
ber where she is." Another be^'^red hiui to tell 
those above her not to stick their feet out, and to be 
less foul in their talk. The old women in particular 
beset him upon the point of morals ; and denounced 
certain culprits furiously, but in the greatest con- 
fidence. "Think a moment, Signor Commissario ; 
you others do not see anything at all, saving your 
]_)resence. There 's that blonde girl in No. 77 ; she 
goes up on deck every night at one o'clock and 
does not come down again for hours. It is a shame. 
It ought to be put a stop to." Some wished 
to move because of an asthmatic neighbor; or 
(reasonably enough in this case) because that girl 



XTbe Momen's Cabin, 183 

near by smelt so strongly of musk that it could not 
be endured. And the commissary had to soothe 
them : "All right, we '11 see about it — Don't mind — 
Go to sleep." Then, moving on with his lantern, he 
would see mothers slumberino^ with their children in 
their arms and breathing heavily, their faces con- 
torted by a sad or a frightful dream ; young bosoms 
left uncovered ; toothless mouths gaping wide as if 
yelling in their sleep ; and glistening, smiling eyes 
fixed upon him in the half-light. Sometimes in the 
passage-way he would come upon a face that looked 
suspicious and must be questioned. " Where are 
you going at this time of night ? " " Up on deck (of 
course) for a purpose." '^ What, with eyes glisten- 
ing like that ! I '11 give you ^ve minutes and then 
I '11 feel your pulse." Farther on he stopped to give 
a warning: "I tell you for the last time, if you do 
not change to-morrow I '11 — Are n't you ashamed ! " 
And the poor creature would reply with what was 
sometimes the miserable truth : " Alas ! I have no 
other ! " 

And so from one aisle to another, now putting 
back on the pillow the head of a naked infant 
that was hanging out of the berth, now quieting 
a couple of old tattling (bracmie, — prying) crones, 
who were quarrelling under their breath about some 
difficulty arisen that morning as to a partition of 
biscuit ; and a few paces farther on cheering up a 
poor lone creature who was weeping on her pillow 



i84 ®n Blue Mater^ 

oppressed with a melancholy forboding that she 
would not meet her husband in America. By dint 
of passing and repassing among these people he bad 
come to know each one's way of sleeping. The burly 
Bolognese who lay upon her side almost touched the 
berth above her; the pretty peasant of Capracotta 
curled herself up like a squirrel ; those two jades of 
singing girls slept with all foui' limbs spread out, 
and the " decayed lady " kept that poor black silk 
dress spread over her like the pall of her past 
fortune. The fairest and most tranquil even in 
sleep was the Genoese, who lay supine and covered 
from head to foot like the statue of a queen upon a 
tomb of marble. But the sight of those gray un- 
happy heads, of all those mothers, homeless and 
lacking bread, asleep on the wide sea thousands of 
miles alike from the country they had left and the 
country they were seeking, kept every sensual idea 
far from his mind, even in view of the much expos- 
ure, conscious or unconscious, which he was forced 
to behold. He went about down there like a doctor 
in a hospital, as impregnable to teuiptation as that 
poor old jumping- jack of a sailor who carried the 
lantern for him. Unhappy hunchback ! For him, 
not protected by the dignity of his office, the task 
was far harder; especially when the commissary 
went away, and left him alone in the place with the 
bucket of water and the di[)per, — at the beck and 
call of every one who wished to drink. Vie/i qua 



XTbe Momcu'5 Cabin. 185 

vecio — A mi, omrri dipersi — Dessedet pivel! Aapia ! 
— ^gua I — JEva ! — Da lev ! — Da haver ! They 
would all quarrel right before him, setting rules and 
regulations at naught, and laughing him to scorn. 
When he called tlieni to order they stunned him 
with chatter, woman-fashion, and some of them 
turned their backs upon him with scant politeness. 
At getting-up time especially, when the question was 
whose was which in all that snarl of things, they 
drove him mad, completely ; and, fleeing as from a 
swarm of wasps he took refuge on deck panting and 
perspiring. That very morning, at the fated hour, 
I found him at the door of the cabin utterly de- 
moralized. " Well ! " I said, '' they make your life a 
burden to you, don't they ? " " Ah ! " he replied, 
spitting out his quid with fury, "iV6> ne posso cih .^" 
^' Is it so every voyage ? " I asked. " No ! the Lord 
be thanked ! " he said. There were voyages and 
voyages. Sometimes it was a cargo of right good 
women. Sometimes, as this trip for example, a Ve 
na raffega de donne fnaleducJue^ a I'eal cwrego c/'- 
agidenti ! Then resuming his philosophical calm and 
raising his forefinger he whispered confidentially in 
my ear: Scia sente ( stia a sentire ) . Scid no piggie 
mogge ! (non prenda rnoglie), — "Mark me, don't 
you get married ! " And so, turning his hump upon 
me, he went his way. 

' Uiia raffica di donne maledticaie, — literally a squall of ill-conditioned 
women. 



1 86 ®n Blue Maten 

That very morniDg, too, there had come to pass 
in the women's cabin a most scandalous thing, of 
which I did not hear until later. I stood with the 
commissary on the bridge to watch the great noon 
jaw-exercise (hallo dei denti). This was like what 
one sees on saints' holidays in the country where a 
hundred families take their food out in a meadow in 
the open air; a hum and bustle as of an encamp- 
ment; numberless groups of men, women, and chil- 
dren, sitting, kneeling, squatting in a thousand differ- 
ent ways, above, below, on every projection and in 
every corner ; their plates in their hands, between 
their knees, between their feet; their heads covei'ed 
with handkerchiefs, aprons, paper caps, with their 
up-turned skirts, even with baskets, to protect them 
against the blazing sun ; and in midst of these 
groups, between the canteen and the kitchens, an 
eager running to and fro of numberless capi-rancio 
(heads of messes) with loaves under their arms, pots 
and wooden bowls in their hands, and followed by a 
thousand eyes, beckoned by a thousand hands, apos- 
trophized by a thousand tongues. Beside the com- 
missary was the Garibaldian, regarding group after 
group with slow, unkindly glance, and on his right 
the young lady fi'om Mestre, leaning on the railing, 
both intently gazing at the Genoese girl who sat on 
the deck below. She was cutting up the meat for 
her little brother, pouring out drink for her father, 
and handing this thing or that to a couple of other 



ITbe Momcu'6 Cabin* 187 

women and a little boy wlio belonged to her ranclio. 
As graceful as ever, but not as calm. She ate nothing 
and her hands trembled. 

The young lady remarked that her eyes were red ; 
andj supposing that she might have been crying, 
asked the commissary if he knew why. 

He knew perfectly well, and told us all about it. 
From that vipers' nest of envious hatred which had 
been hissing round about her for several days, one 
head had at last arisen, and had stung her to the 
quick. Going back into the cabin that morning, 
after taking her little brother on deck, she had 
found a crowd of women around her berth, to which 
a slip of paper had been stuck with a lump of 
moistened bread crumb. It had been torn from a 
dirty newspaper, and had been scrawled over in black 
chalk and in large characters with a dozen words 
or so. She had hardly read them when she put her 
hands to her face and burst out into violent weeping. 
The words were crude, cruel adjectives ; not to be 
written ; hardly to be imagined. Then the women, 
who had never once thought of taking down the 
paper, had tried to comfort her after their fashion ; 
and one of them, on the part of a third, had whis- 
pered in her ear the name of the culprit, — a vile, un- 
clean, little wretch, who had stolen in and tacked 
up that horrible stuff at a moment when there was 
hardly anyone below. Not so quickly, however, as 
to escape the sharp eyes of a little fellow who seemed 



1 88 m Blue Mater. 

to be asleep, but was broad awake, and duly told 
his mother all about it. '^Take the paper to the 
captaiu," the woman had said, -^'have the commis- 
sary send for her — they '11 put her in irons — they '11 
put her in the pillory on deck. She '11 be tried for 
it when she gets on shore in America." Then the poor 
girl had taken down the paper, sobbing, and waited 
until her slanderer should appeal*. She came down, 
sure enough, a shoi't time after ; and was no less a 
person than that blear-eyed, red-faced creature who 
had taken a fancy to the little bookkeeper, and was 
as jealous as any animal. At the very first sound of 
" There she is ! " the Genoese had run towards her, 
followed by the gossips, all eager for a scene. The 
creature turned pale, but raised her head defiantl}", 
nevertheless. And the poor girl only held out the 
paper to her, saying, in a trembling voice : J^ ben, cose 
vlio facto ? — '' What have I ever done to you ? " The 
quickness with which the other seized and tore up 
the corpus delicti was an involuntary confession 
which made denial worse than useless. The Geno- 
ese, without another word, had gone on deck, weep- 
ing and quite overcome, but without complaining to 
anyone. The commissary, informed of the matter, 
had sent for the culprit, who swore through thick 
and thin (colle inani e coi piedi) that she was inno- 
cent ; so all he could do was to threaten to put her 
in irons and say, that the next time he would send 
her down into the hold to be gnawed by the rats. 



TLbc Moments Cabin. 189 

The young lady from Mestre, who had listened to 
all this without taking lier eyes off the girl, repeated 
slowly to herself and in her Venetian accent, ^' J^ hen^ 
cosa vlio facto ? " And her eyes glistened wdth tears. 

The commissary had gathered some information 
about the girl and her family. She was from Le- 
vanto. Her father, wdio kept some kind of a shop, 
had not done well, and had determined to go to 
America, on the invitation of a relative thei"e who 
was getting on ; but, as he had not a soldo, he was 
obliged to defer his departure for a year, while the 
daughter put by the money for the journey, centime 
by centime ; selling all her trinkets ; helping to 
nurse a sick German lady by night, and ironing at 
the baths by day. A large black mark which she 
had on one hand, and which was visible from where 
we were, was no doubt the result of a burn. 

At that moment, by chance, or otherwise, she 
raised her head ; and, seeing at once that we were 
talking of her, blushed deeply ; but, reassured by a 
kind look from the young lady, fixed her large blue 
eyes upon her and smiled. Then bending her head 
over her brother there was nothing of her to be seen 
but her golden tresses and her fair, blushing neck. 

The young lady touched the arm of the Garibal- 
dian with her fan; and, pointing to the girl, said, in 
her sweet, sad voice, " That is virtue ! " 

This threw light for me upon the kind of talk 
these two held toc>:ether and the usual outcome of it. 



I90 ©n Blue Mater, 

I was curious to see what effect she might have pro- 
duced thus far upon her interlocutor, and looked 
round to see his face ; but he had already turned 
away and fixed his gaze upon the sea; while the 
w^hole third class, rising on tiptoe as at the word of 
command, were doing the same, amid loud murmurs. 

There was a sail on the horizon to the right. The 
officer on watch had signalled her some time ago. 
There was nothing to be seen l)ut a little white spot, 
trapezium-shaped, and faintly colored by a ray of 
the sun in the midst of gray immensity. A far-off 
squall of rain, making a black background, gave it 
a wondrous whiteness, but made it look all the more ^ 
piteous as if the fury of the ocean were threatening 
that ship alone. And it is impossible to describe 
the life, the sudden gayety which that little image of 
humanity aroused in the midst of our boundless soli- 
tude;— as if all at once we had got back into in- 
habited regions. The officer sent for the flags of the 
nautical alphabet and focused his glass. When we 
were near, the sailing ship dipped hei- flag and the 
Galileo returned the salute. 

Then ensued between the ship and ourselves a 
hasty dialogue which the officer translated into 
words for us ; and which the emigrants followed 
with their eyes as if they understood. 

It was an Italian ship, becalmed near the equatoi'. 

The first thing she told us was the name of the 
owner — Antonio Paganetti. 



TLbc Momen'9 Cabin. 191 

Then : From Valparaiso, bound for Genoa. 

How many days out ? 

Sixty. 

How many days becalmed? 

Eighteen. 

Quello pittin ! (Quel ijoco! ) " All that time ! " 
exclaimed the officei*. 

Then the other : Pray re[)ort us to our agent at 
Montevideo. No damaij^e — all well. 

Need anything? 

No, thank you. 

Buon viaggio ! 

Buon viaggio I 

How large, how swift, how cheerful oui' Galileo 
appeared compared with that little moveless ship, 
which had, pei'haps, a crew of ten or twelve men, 
and was condemned to float there, like a dead thing, 
who knows for how long, beneath the terrible sun of 
the Equator ! With a kind of pity, we saw her 
grow smaller and smaller, become once more a white 
spot and then disappear below the horizon ; but our 
pity was a little selfish ; the kind of pity which first- 
class travellers in a thundering express train feel 
for a one-horse carriage floundering wearily along 
through the rain and mud. And from this little 
meeting alone there arose a current of good-humor 
from stem to stern, which lasted until evening. 

But this day was the day of events. At dinner, 
before sitting down, the captain said, aloud, '^Scignori, 



192 



On Bine Mater. 



we have another passenger on board." There were 
some that did not understand. "A fine boy," he 
went on, '' only one hundred and ten minutes old." 

We all laughed and commented and wished the 
little fellow luck. From a slight blush that passed 
over the face of the young lady from Mestre, we pei*- 
ceived that the mother must be that peasant woman 
from her district. 

" He was born in the northern hemisphere," the 
captain concluded. ' '' He will be baptized in the 
southern. We cross the Line to-morrow. 



A^' 






I* 







& , i^ 



I w' 



CHAPTER XI 



CROSSING THE LII^E 




HE day after, from early morning 
on, nothing was talked of in the 
forward part of the ship, but the 
new baby and the crossing of the 
Equator ; the Aquatore, the Iqua- 
tore, the Quatore, the Quatuore, 
as they called it; for they mangled the word in a 
hundred ways. 

It was the women, principally, who talked about 
the birth ; all most eager to know how the baby 
would be baptized ; who would be the godfather 
and the godmother — gentle-folk, as usual, — they sur- 
mised. Would the tall Neapolitan christen it, or one 
of the two clericals in the second cabin, or the friar. 
And where ; as there was neither chapel nor altar. — 
And the presents. — All these matters in the narrow 
life on board ship became as important as affairs of 
state, and I was told by tlie commissary that the 
peasant woman from Mestre was the marh of im- 
13 193 



194 ©n mm Mater* 

mense envy on the part of those likely soon to follow 
her example ; for it is part of the code of sea-courtesy 
to pay special regard to lyiog-in women. The other 
ladies, therefore, seeing cups of broth and legs of 
fowls, and glasses of Marsala going about, could not 
but remember with some bitterness that no such 
good fortune would be theirs on land. " What it is 
to be lucky ! " they exclaimed. Some were really 
quite put out about it. 

As to the Equator, everybody talked of that. But 
in order properly to understand what impi'ession the 
sea really made upon all these people, we must go 
back a little. In the first place it disgusted them. 
Ignorance has no admiration for the sea. It has no 
thought to inscribe upon that huge blank page, and 
mere immensity is without beauty save for those 
who think. I do not remember hearing so much as 
a single admiring exclamation about the ocean from 
a single emigrant. When they look on all that wa- 
ter they are invariably impressed by the first idea 
which it raises in every human being ; they regard 
it as the element that drowns. I was able to assure 
myself, almost from the moment of leaving the 
Straits, that for the greater part of these people that 
mighty ocean was a fraud. They saw, namely, no 
wider a stretch of water than on the Mediterranean, 
whereas they had all supposed that, on coming out- 
side, their horizon would be indefinitely extended ; as 
happens when we go up from a hill to a mountain 



Crossing tbe %\nc. 195 

top. Nor for this reason alone. In the mind of the 
lower orders there is always connected with the sea 
a lingei'ing trace of those old notions coming down 
from antiquity and from the Middle Ages; and 
though they may not have thought to see winged 
monsters, hraken a mile in circuit, and singing fish, 
many did suppose they were to behold sea-serpents, 
huge polypi, fights between whales and sword-fish, 
and waves like mountains ; but finding cahn water, 
and seeing never so much as the back fin of a shark 
in a fortnight's sailing, they shrugged their shoulders 
and said, " I don't see anvthinor about this sea more 
than any other sea." As to feeling curiosity re- 
garding other matters connected with it or finding 
pleasure in them, they cannot. They either know 
nothing at all about them, or misunderstand what 
they hear, or simply do not believe. 

I noticed that the talk we hekl on the after-deck 
about the ocean, about navigation, about different 
countries, all naturally suggested by our geograph- 
ical position, and changing, so to speak, with the 
latitude, was passed from class to class and from 
mouth to mouth ; and found an echo, a day or 
two later, in the gossip of the forecastle just as 
happens in a city or village. The officers brought 
it back to us piecemeal as they chanced to hear 
it in passing. And it is amazing what strange 
transformations our accounts and scientific obser- 
vations underwent in this little tour. They spoke 



196 ®n mxxc Mater/ 

in the third class of Atlantis, of which we were 
talking while in the latitude of the Sargasso Sea, as 
of a world that had disappeared not many years ago 
and which some of us declared we had seen. On the 
parallel of Senegambia the talk was of negroes ; and 
the emigrants declared that the Galileo steamed at 
full speed to get by the coast where a tribe of terri- 
ble savages were in the habit of giving chase to ships 
in order to devour the passengers; — and sometimes 
succeeded. As to the Equator, there were those who 
predicted there a heat as of an oven by day ; a heat 
that was to melt all the candles and soften the wax 
on the letters ; a sun so hot as to boil the brains in 
the skull and bring on sunstrokes by the dozen. But 
sti'angest of all it was to find that this passing fi'om 
one hemisphere to another, which might have con- 
vinced them of the rotundity of the earth, furnished 
many, on the contrary, with an argument against it, 
confirming them in their old unbelief ; for did they 
not see with their own eyes that all was a flat plain ! 
And even those who were convinced that the world 
was round were disgusted to find that on passing the 
Line the ship did not, as they expected, begin to de- 
scend and move round the globe like an ant around 
an apple. In the course of the morning while the 
husband of the Swiss lady (gifted with what some 
great man calls the most incurable of all possible 
stupidity, that which is contracted from books) was 
explaining the Equator to a group of emigrants in 




"lerplaining tbe jEquator to a gioup of emigrants in ifcioticall^ scfentiflc pbvaseologv?/ 



1 98 On Blue Mater* 

idiotically scientific phraseology which they could 
not understand : — the electric heat generator of the 
globe, the evaporation register of the two hemis- 
pheres, the heart of the mighty main where blood is 
changed; — his hearers looked up and round and about 
with curiosity and interest ; but not seeing anything 
unusual, glowered at him as who should say, '' That 's 
enough, we are not fools ! " But what interested 
them most of all was that they had heard a day or 
two before how, on crossing the Equator, new stars 
would be seen, and that one of these. Alpha of the 
Centaur, was of all the stars the nearest to the earth. 
They thought perhaps it would be as big as the 
moon. From early morning of the much-expected 
day, and in full sunlight, men and women kept an 
eye on the heavens so as not to miss the miracles. 
One woman asked the commissary whether in the 
new world they were about to enter, the sun and the 
moon would be the same as they had been accus- 
tomed to. What was that line, that straight mark 
Q'iga^, that divided the earth into two parts ? Was 
it true that no one would have the correct time 
there ? And was it true that in the year when one 
went to America a season was lost, and what became 
of that season ? 

The commissary tried to set the matter forth^ 
but some paid no attention whatever to the ex- 
planation they had asked for ; as if that were 
time lost ; or else brought the whole force of their 



(Xrossina tbe %inc. 199 

minds to bear upon what he said in the hope of com- 
prehending it, but at last gave it u[) witli a gesture 
of despair. The conclusion readied by most of them 
was a strong suspicion that all these wonders were 
nothing but a parcel of stuff got off by the sig- 
nori to make a show of learning'; or at all events 

CD ^ 

that these explanations were made out of whole 
cloth by persons who knew no more about it than 
anyone else. A large majority would rather have 
believed in the three legendary monks of Asia vv^ho 
have for fifteen hundred years been walkino^ straig^ht 
forward to find the place where the sun rises. It was 
not, indeed, inspiriting to reflect that a thousand per- 
haps out of those sixteen hundred citizens of one of 
the most civilized countries of Europe had no broader 
or more correct views about the earth and the heavens 
than an equal number of their own class would have 
had five hundred years ago ; and that, after all, it may 
be that in this world there is a certain irreducible 
quantity of ignorance which, though kept in bounds 
and shaped in a hundred ways, like a mass of water, 
cannot be lessened in amount. 

Be that as it may, the crossing of the Equator was 
a holiday for everybody ; that the more because of a 
special dole of three litres of wine per rcmclo which 
had been announced, and because the captain had 
given orders to open the hatches and let everyone 
2:et at his bag^o;ao^e. It was a s^reat treat for them to 
have out some fresh things in place of their old rags, 



200 Qn Mwc Mater* 

so miserably used up by the rains of the tropics. And, 
more even than this, the announcement of fireworks 
put the boys and girls in a fever of expectation. The 
important operation of matutinal ablution was per- 
formed with unusual vigor; and at breakfast time the 
young women were seen with new^ kerchiefs on their 
heads and fresh ribbons on their bosoms ; the mam- 
mas with hair brushed much more sedulously than 
usual ; the men with amazing cravats, shaven faces, 
clean shirts, and a good deal of the dirt scrubbed off 
their necks. It was like a crowed on a holiday. The 
women out of respect to the new saint did not work, 
and most of the men, gathered in large talkative 
groups, gave premonitory tokens of the grand times 
they meant to have that evening with their wine. 
Many, meanwhile, were thronging round the caboose 
to make timely interest for some bits from the first- 
class cabin, and even in the third-class kitchen there 
was a movement, an unusual agitation, calculated to 
induce a suspicion that contraband traffic in eatables 
was going on. Two heavy showers that fell at an 
hour's interval only served to heighten the good 
humor of the multitude, for the sky cleared, and the 
sea, rolling in long, smooth billows, now blue, now 
violet," seemed to promise not to disturb the festivities. 
And there was feasting for us also — commencing, 
for me, right after breakfast in the first officer's state- 
room, where I passed a delightful hour in company with 
two other officers and the Marsigliese, drinking good 



Crossina tbe %inc. 201 

champagne — thanks to a discussion about James 
Watt. For, speaking of the ill hap of inventors, 
the Marsigliese rashly remarked that Watt had died 
in poverty. The first officer denied this, saying that 
he had died wealthy and surrounded by illustrious 
friends. ^' Dans la miserey monsieur ! Dans V indi- 
gence la plus affrense ! " " Rich ! I assure you, rich ! " 
" Sans le sou ! Saiis le sou ! " So there was a bet ; 
settled beyond appeal by reference to D Histoire de 
la Machine a Vccpeur, a copy of which was on board ; 
— written as chance would have it by a Marseillais. 
And the author most unceremoniously refuted his 
fellow-citizen. Good-natured originals, these three 
officers, not excepting the clever dark-complexioned 
hero of the telegraphic despatch. All younger in 
mind than might have been expected from their age, 
and of a certain hermit-like simplicity rarely seen 
even among hermits. Each had some study or some 
art with which to beo^uile the time on those long^ 
voyages. The first officer was studying German, the 
second was a marine painter, the third had lately 
begun to learn the flute ; and each had an endless 
fund of stories about his voyages, which he told 
slowly, in a peculiar way; recounting the most as- 
tounding things in the most natural way in the world 
as people do whose lot it is to pass their lives among 
the wildest and most adventurous of the human race, 
when exceptional circumstances afford these the full- 
est scope for thought and action. They had made 



202 



®n Blue Matet^ 



voyages full of incident when the record of births 
aud deaths was constantly being added to ; they had 
been wearied of their lives because of quarantine ; 



'"■* mi 




Ube sccon^ officer was a marine painter.* 



they had stood watch in nights of storm fit to turn 
the hair gray; they had seen suffering, intrigue, ter- 



Crossiiic} tbe %\nc. 203 

ror; there had l)eei] on board families of gypsies; 
faces unlike any other faces. And very curious was 
the confusion or rather lack of connection in their 
ideas regarding the politics of the two countries be- 
tween which they were always passing. When they 
reached Genoa they were a couple of months behind 
hand in Italian mattei's ; and before they could catch 
up with these they set out again for the Argentine — 
reaching it once more after a iifty-days fast from all 
its affairs. But strangest of all w^as their attitude 
toward their own families. The first officer amused 
us mightily, setting forth, glass in hand, how he had 
been married a year and a half, and was like one 
married a month or so before. He had left Genoa a 
week after the wedding. Since that time had seen 
his wife at intervals of two months, and that for such 
short periods that the two had had no time to 
become intimate ; so that when he went home he 
was received Avith emotion and treated with a sort 
of modest respect and delicacy, almost as if he were 
a stranger. The honeymoon never came to an end. 
He even showed us the likeness of his wife as if ex- 
hibiting, in confidence, the photograph of a young 
lady to whom he was paying court. " ^^i^^ Genois! " 
said the Marsigliese as he looked at it. '^ But she is 
from Palei'mo ! " '' Pas possible ! " What a roar ! 
Such a roar that this time he had to pretend he was 
Jesting. 

All were in good spirits, though the captain had 



204 On Blue Mater* 

given out that there was to be no ducking of the 
passengers who were crossing the line for the first 
time. A nuisance, he said it was, and always made 
trouble. Moreover, there were no persons who were 
proper subjects for that sort of thing. Even the Geno- 
ese stroked his clothes-brush beard with an air less 
bored than usual. He would stop, from time to time, 
one passenger after another, fix his single eye upon 
him and solemnly enunciate, "Chicken breasts in 
Madeira ! " He had extorted a whole batch of se- 
crets from the cook, and declared that there was to 
be a splendid dinner — and speeches. The agent, 
with whom I took a turn or two, said the Marsigliese 
was to propose a toast — he had heard him rehears- 
ing it in his state-room. And he told me, moreover, 
that the evenino^ before there had been a scene. That 
viprous-tongued mother of the piano player, namely, 
having hinted to the so-called " thief " that he would 
do well to contradict the slanders that were going 
about regarding him, this gentleman had been to 
the captain, loudly demanding to know what these 
slanders were, and threatening sword and pistol. 
But it seems that, on earnest entreaty, he had prom- 
ised to be quiet until we got into the next hemis- 
phere. We went on deck and found that detestable 
spitfire apparently much pleased at having at last 
succeeded in raisins: a disturbance. And we both 
remarked an unusual animation in tlie dull face of 
her daughter, like the reflection of some secret com- 



Crossing tbe Xiiie^ 205 

placency ; but it was in vain that the agent, sus- 
pecting some more scissors' work, looked round for 
the cause with his long, searching glance. As we 
passed the pantry, there were the bride and l)ride- 
gi'oom drinking rosolio and water. The agent bowed, 
and the young gentleman modestly remarked : '' We 
are having a little celebration over the Equator." 
'' H'm," said the agent rather sharply, " I think you 
have a little celebration over all the parallels," 
whereon the pair hastily concealed their faces in 
their glasses. Then we went to have a drop of 
Chartreuse at the door of the " tamer's " room. This 
lady received her friends with swimming eyes, she 
felt so kindly ; and declared she wished the trip 
would last a year ; such capital company, so well 
bred, so polite, so pleasant — a whole string, in fact 
of honeyed phi'ases which had, I am afraid, their rise 
in the many many-colored glasses she had sipped 
during the day. Thence to the deck, where we found 
something new ; the Argentine lady, queen of the 
ship, with her court of admirers about her, in a 
vanilla-colored dress which set off her warm, florid, 
Creole complexion to a marvel, and all radiant as if 
she were glad to get back to her own half of the 
world ; and the Swiss lady promenading with her 
old friend, the deputy, though nobody had seen 
when or how she had managed to make it up with 
him. A half-hour of her balcl, unjointed chat, all 
little rose-colored bits of nonsense and silly laughing, 



2o6 <^\\ mixxc Mater, 

like a slightly tipsy serving girl, convinced me that 
she was not ill pleased, after all, to put her little, 
white foot back into the Parliament of Buenos 
x\yres. And her husband, too, seemed well pleased 
at the result of his professional excursions among the 
emigrants; for he was seen with his spectacles fixed 
upon an outspread chart getting new geographical 
notions from the first ofiicer. In all eyes there 
appeared to beam a kind of confused glimmer of 
hope such as is seen in people's faces on New Year's 
Eve; as if they believed that better fortune was 
awaiting them in the other hemisphere than had 
attended them in this. 

Our cheerfulness was still G;i'eater at dinnei*, where 
all chatted eagerly like a great tableful of good 
friends — save only and excepting the Garibaldiau, 
and the lady of the brush, who, appai'ently for no 
other purpose than to vex her husband, held her 
tonsrue and ate nothinty. And we had, moreover, 
the agreeable surprise of hearing the Brazilian pair, 
who, drawn into talk by the Argentines, and gradu- 
ally aroused by love of country, described, with a 
noble eloquence that amazed us all, the beauty of 
their native land, from the great bay of Rio Janeiro, 
crowned with sugar-loaf mountains and set thick 
with islands of palm trees and gigantic ferns, to the 
vast forests, like cathedral colonnades, close-crowded, 
endless, dark, alive with apes and panthers, with 
flights of parrots green and red, with overhanging 



Crossing tbe %inc. 207 

clouds of floating gems and winged flowers and fire- 
flies without numbei'. The conversation branched 
out upon this theme, and all who had been in Brazil 
began to recount what they had seen, all speaking 
at once, and tlie Bi'azilian fauna and floi*a were ex- 
hausted, and tapirs and crocodiles and mighty rivers 
passed in review ; huge toads that bark, monstrous 
bats that suck the blood of horses, and horrible 
serpents that suck the breasts of women, and frogs 
that sing in the tree- tops, and tortoises two yards 
long, and enormous ants of St. Paul, which the na- 
tives fry and eat. And as they added harmonious 
mimicry to their descriptions, thei'e was such a min- 
gled clamor of roaring and bellowing, and cackling 
and hissing, that one seemed in the midst of a trop- 
ical forest, and felt at times a sense of horror. The 
only ones that took no heed were the bride and 
groom, who, profiting by the confusion, gently passed 
their arms around each other's waists, under the 
burning gaze of the piano player, and the blonde 
Swiss lady, who dealt out sparkling glances to the 
Argentine, the Tuscan, the tenoi', the Peruvian, with 
a freedom that was, perhaps, a little too evident, so 
that the captain could not refrain from his warning 
phrase : Qiiella scignoa a 77ie comenga a angoscid (" I 
shall not be able to endure that lady much longer.'') 
But he was soothed by the toast of the Marsigliese, 
who rose up, swelled out his Patagonian chest, and, 
raising his goblet of champagne, said in solemn tone : 



2o8 ©n 3Blue Mater, 

" Je hois a la sante de notre hrave Commandant . . . 
a la Societe de Navigation . . . a V Italie^ Mes- 
sieursJ'' All applauded save only the mill-owner, 
and I pardoned him in that hour the hash he made 
of my native language, and which he thought he 
made of my fellow-citizens. 

We rose from the table and went on the hurricane 
deck, preceded by the third officer carrying an arm- 
ful of rockets, Catharine wheels, and Roman candles. 
There was hardly room for us all, and I was shoved 
over to the port-side in front of the commissary, and 
right between the " scapegallows " and the ^' Direc- 
tor of the Society-for-no-more-bad-smelling-cesspools." 
The bow was already crowded, but as the sky was 
covered with a dense cloud and the three lanterns, 
red, white, and green, which burned like three great 
eyes, at either side of the ship and at the mast-head, 
gave but a faint light, all that mass of people were 
in the dark, and from that darkness there "floated up 
a hundred confused sounds of drinkino; sons^s, of 
women laughing, and of children crying, making the 
multitude seem ten times as large. It was like being 
on the roof of the Town Hall when a carnival demon- 
stration is going on against the Syndic. As the first 
Beno^al lio^ht went off there was a burst of vivas. 
and sixteen hundred faces were lighted up ; a vast 
mass of people standing on the hatches, on the bul- 
warks, on the top of the deck-house, on the live-stock 
pens, astride of the backstays, on the shrouds, stand- 



Crossing tbe %xnc. 209 

ing up otf chairs, on the bitts, on casks, on the deck- 
troLighs, everywhere ; not an inch of the deck could 
be seen, and as the outlines of the ship were con- 
cealed by human forms, all this throng of persons 
seemed suspended over the sea like a crowd of spec- 
tres. In midst of an admiring silence we heard a 
mocking voice or two: O-o-o-o-lil BaciGcia ! Dagli 
on taj — Cadla Dionsu Tasca! Then a great silence, 
and the rush of the rocket was heard, and the throb 
of the engine. Showers of fire fell upon the glassy 
sea, unruffled by a breath of wind ; the rockets burst 
and vanished in the vast, dark heavens, noiseless as 
if in vacuum. At every shower of fiery light I saw 
in the crowd some well-known countenance. Now 
it was the bold face of the Bolo2:nese standino^ hio^h 
above her neighbors ; now the intense look of the 
poor bookkeeper; now the negress, the nurse of the 
Brazilian family, surrounded by eager faces ; farther 
down the round visage of the peasant woman from 
Capracotta ; near the slaughter-house the impassible 
face of the friar ; and far forward the mysterious 
mask of the mountebank. Here and there were seen 
couples which the sudden illumination forced quickly 
to move into more conventional positions, while sup- 
pressed giggles and reproving words and little shrieks 
broke out every now and then, to show that a good 
deal was going on in the way of bold pinching and 
persistent pulling about. " This evening," said the 

commissary, "that poor old hunchback will have his 
14 



2 10 



(^n Blue Mater. 



hands full." Meanwhile the Bengal lights tinged all 
these faces with purple, with white, and with green ; 
and at every bursting rocket there arose a cry of 
Viva VAonerica! Viva il Galileo! and now and 
then, but rarely, Viva V Italia! Above the crowd 
hats, handkerchiefs, and glasses were seen to wave ; 
babies, held up by their mothers, flung their little 
arms about — all a true type of the people which 
could for a moment foro^et so much trouble in 
thoughtless hilarity. At last the fireworks came to 
an end, and the ship, dark once more but full of 
feasting as ever, plunged amid songs and shouting 
into the blackness of the other hemisphere. 

But the causeless joy of that throng of people at 
the confines of a new world, on the lone ocean, and 
at night, was to me more pitiful than their sadness. 
It was like a sinister gleam that brought out their 
misery all the more. Unhappy exiled children of 
my country, — blood drawn from the arteries of my 
native land, — my ill-clad brothers, — my starving sis- 
ters, — sons and fathers who have fought and will 
fight again for the soil on which they could not, or 
cannot, longer live ! I never loved you as I did that 
evening, never as then, thought of your suffering and 
of the blind mistrust with which we sometimes 
regard you. We are not free from stain. We are to 
blame for the faults and shortcomini>:s with which 
the world upbraids you. Our hands are not clean 
in this matter, for we have not loved you or labored 



drosBiiuj tbe %\nc. 



211 



for you as we oiiglit. Never did 1 feel such bitter- 
ness of regret as in tliat hour for bavino; nothiuo: 
but words to give you. The last dream of Faust 
was in my mind. To open a new land to thousands 
upon thousands, to see smiling harvests and happy 
villages upon the onward path of an industrious, 
free, contented people. For this only is life worth 
having ! You are our country, our worhl ; and so 
long as your mother earth sees you weep and suffer, 
so long will all our happiness be selfishness, and all 
our boasting, lies. 




CHAPTER XTI 



LITTLE GALILEO 




FTER that day of frolic, as is usual 
in such cases, a more leaden dul- 
ness than ever settled down upon 
the ship. The heat was dreadful 
and was enhanced by the sight of 
a repulsive-looking sea which gave 
an idea of what the ocean might 
become if no bounds w^ere set to the multiplication 
of its inhabitants — a hideous and pestilential char- 
nel of dead heiTings and putrified codfish. Op- 
pressed by the monotony, and still quivering after 
the disorder of the day before, the greater part of the 
steerage people would not even move when the sail- 
ors, washing down the deck, as usual, with the hose, 
sent streams and spouts of water in every direction ; 
but just closed their eyes and let themselves be 
sluiced like worn-out dogs. For many hours the 
whole ship seemed plunged in profoundest lethargy, 
and even after an interval of time the remembrance 



212 



Xittle Galileo* 213 

of that day is as dismal as that of a dead face. I 
think I see now in the sultry afternoon the counte- 
nance of the Genoese as he comes to my stateroom 
and asks: " Shall we go and see them kill?" "Kill ! 
Kill what?" I said. A steer of course. He always 
knew about it the day before, and went to look on 
and massacre the time. O ! the endless hours passed 
at the air-port, staring out at that sluggish, melan- 
choly sea. They say that time is money, and yet I 
would have given a whole century full of such hours 
for five centimes. Sea ! sea ! and still more sea ! 
That little Mediterranean yonder! Why, I thought 
of it as a blue lake suffocated between mountains, 
and far away beyond the bounds of thought. Water, 
boundless water! There half flashed across my mind 
a horrible suspicion that we had lost our way and 
were heading for the Antarctic Pole, to crash into the 
eternal ice. Ah ! ha[)py chance ! Ruy Bias came 
to rouse me. He gazed at me with a lack-lustre eye 
meant to suggest a night passed in aristocratic excess, 
and imparted some good news. The christening was 
fixed for four o'clock that afternoon. 

Everything was arranged. The baptism and the 
registration were to be held in the chart-room, near 
the wheel under the bridge. The Neapolitan priest 
was to administer the so-called private baptism, for 
which he must have been in great practice, since he 
had travelled during his early years over the lonely 
plains of farthest Argentina, where there were no 



214 On Mixc Maten 

cliurches, and where the inhabitants, preserving rude 
tradition only of the Catholic religion, and hearing of 
a priest, would come hastening to him for the rite ; 
young fellows even sometimes demanding it as they 
sat on horseback. He had politely offered his ser- 
vices without question of patacones and a steward 
had seen him that moi-ning get out a cope and stole 
which bore unmistakable signs of long and adven- 
turous service. The child was, as usual, to have tke 
name of the ship ; and the Galileo had already a 
dozen homonymous children scattered about the 
world. The young lady from Mestre was to be god- 
mother. The captain had offered to be godfather ; 
but had been induced to resign his place to the 
Argentine Delegate, that gentleman having cogently 
urged that the child ought to have, for sponsor and 
welcomer to the citizenship he was adopting, a repre- 
sentative of the Republic. 

This graceful act as I afterwards learned, made his 
peace with the other passengers ; for they had before 
accused him and the rest of being rather distant with 
the Europeans, and of holding themselves aloof. I 
had, however, known them for several days, and had 
observed them with the liveliest curiosity ; for they 
were the first I had seen of a people which is, or 
ought to be, more important for an Italian to know 
than any other. The delegate was the oldest of the 
party and seemed to take the lead, as having the 
most level {quadra — square) liead among them all. 



Xittle (Balileo. 215 

Tall, with the fine, firra face of a man inured to the 
ways of the world and the strife of politics, he sent 
through liis eye-glasses the bold conqiiericg glance 
of one that swayed the votes of men, and the hearts 
of women. The husband of the blonde lady, was a 
light-haired little counsellor, secretary to some minis- 
ter plenipotentiary of his own country, with a pair 
of lively gray eyes, as sharp as bodkins, which 
seemed, when they looked at one, to pierce through 
brain and bosom, down to the very memorandum 
book. There were two dark youths, very elegant, 
and rather insignificant, who seemed to think of 
nothing but the dainty white linen of which they 
made such show, and of their thick hair, so artist- 
ically built up : hair of that deep, sheeny, Argentine 
— Andalusian black \vhich is neither more nor less 
than a flout to giizzled heads. The most original 
of all was the fifth, a large fine man of thirty, with 
a bold face, and a I'ough voice ; type of the horse 
tamer, proprietor of a vast estcmcia^ in the province 
of Buenos Ayres, where he passed two years out of 
three, among thirty thousand cows and twenty thou- 
sand sheep — leading the life of the g audio ^ g^i^g 
to Paris for a change ; and expending there each 
time a thousand head of cattle or so. 

A trait common to all was the fineness of the 
mouth and the smallness of the head ; which they 
always carried high ; but the hereditary habit which 
others have observed in the Argentines of coming 



2i6 ©n Blue Mater^ 

down upon the toes rather than upon the heel, I did 
not, to say the truth, remark. Notably elegant and 
dainty in their personal habits, every one of them. 
Courteous, but of a courtesy, so to speak, more flow- 
ing than that of the Spaniard, less ceremonious than 
that of the Frenchman ; joined to a lively ease of 
manner and conversation altoo:ether usual with men 
w^ho go out into life as soon as they cease to be chil- 
dren, and who, in the midst of an immature, unsettled, 
disorderly society grow up untroubled, unrestrained ; 
full of confidence in themselves and their own good 
fortune. Their turn of mind was expressed by a 
kind of look, which is best likened to the bold glance 
of a man on horseback with a free horizon before him. 
Withal an amazing readiness in pranouncing opinions 
upon the nations, the institutions, and the manners 
of Europe, — seen in passing; — opinions which dis- 
played a perception rather acute than profound, and 
a great variety, not so much of study as of reading, 
— quoted readily and aptly. And they showed, not 
so much perhaps in their opinions as in their pref- 
erence for certain subjects of conversation, a strong 
sympathy wdth nature and with French life, aris- 
ing from an indisputable analogy in the features of 
their mind and intelligence. They all had Paris at 
their fins^ers' ends, and their trunks were full of 
boulevard newspapers and photograph likenesses of 
artistes from the Opera and the Comedie. In other 
countries they knew well enough the gambling houses 



Xittle Oalileo. 217 

and the baths, and above all the music halls ; about 
which they talked with all the fire of youth ; but it 
was plain that they had nothing to ask of us in this 
respect, for they had Europe over to dance and sing 
for them in their own place. As to Italy it was im- 
possible to find out, under the necessary courtesy of 
their phrases, what their real sentiments were. They 
were well pleased with the immigration from our 
country, regarding it as an influx of excellent labor- 
ers and would say, pointing to the emigrants : " All 
that is so much gold, for us; send us all Italy, so 
only you leave the monarchy at home." 

It was clear, also, that they, like the revolutionists 
of the last century, regarded a human being subject 
to monarchy as a poor creature worthy of all com- 
miseration, and that they looked upon us Europeans 
as a sort of beings born old, dragging ourselves 
about among the miserable I'elics of a dead past, and 
half-starved, — as matter of course. Beneath all this 
there flashed out a lively national pride, the pride 
of a small people that had conquered great Spain, 
humiliated England, and enlarged the borders of the 
civilized world ; sweeping out barbarism from an 
enormous region, so that men of. every language and 
of every race might find shelter there. In fact, they 
celebrated at least twice a week, with floods of 
champagne, some glorious event of the Argentine 
revolution ; — admirable proof, of coui'se, of the good 
results flowing from those victories. But between 



2i8 ®n JBlue Matei\ 

their national pride and that of Europeans there 
was this remarkable difference ; that, while we base 
ours upon the past, and ahvays pique ourselves upon 
that, and boast of that, they seldom, if ever, spoke 
of it, but looked to the future with the child's con- 
stant phrase, " When we are grown up ! " And in 
them all there was evident, not the hope, but the 
certitude, bright, deep, unshakable, of becoming in 
time an enormous people, the United States of Latin 
America, swarming from the valley of the Amazon 
to the farthest confines of Patagonia. And their 
consciousness of being called to this pre-eminence 
was evident, moreover, from their anxiety on every 
occasion to show themselves original, not only with 
respect to the old Spanish ancestors, of whom they 
spoke in a slightly mocking tone, as of a race of 
which, in happy hour, they had outgrown eveiy 
trace, but also with respect to the other Latin peoples 
of America, the Chilians, the Peruvians, the Bolivi- 
ans, the Brazilians ; pointing out the moral and 
intellectual shortcomings and the absurd character- 
istics of all these with a facetious irony which 
betrayed a supercilious rivalry tempered by no 
brothei'ly feeling whatever. All these remai'ks they 
made in eager, fluent language, broken by hearty 
laughs and outbursts of almost involuntary sincerity, 
revealing natures capable of violent but generous 
passions, and a great fickleness of emotion born of 
an ardent desire and determination to enjoy life in 



Xittle Galileo* 219 

every possible way. One thing I could have wished 
to see, and that was, something more like human 
pity in the eyes and voices of one or two of them 
when telling of certain inhuman episodes in their 
history ; something a little saddei' and softer, to dis- 
pel the suspicion that the long tradition of wars in 
the desert and wars among themselves, horrible all, 
had left a trace of evil in their natures. But, on the 
whole, the first impression was most agreeable, such 
as to make one doubly eager to scan their characters 
more closely. 

For the first time I found myself with people 
wholly new to me, — a thing which had never hap- 
pened in Eui'ope. In the midst of a vast mass of 
ideas and attainments common to us all, I vaguely 
recognized the traces of a moral and mental educa- 
tion wholly different from ours ; the peculiar notions 
of a race encamped upon the confines of civilization 
at the extremity of a thinly populated continent, in 
the solitude which an invading army would find, 
and impressed by scenery beautiful in another way 
from ours ; more vast, more primitive, more awful. 
And I was amazed at that Spanish language of 
theirs, no longer hide-bound, as it were, but worked 
loose, and lighted up, accentuated, in a way alto- 
gether new to me ; starred with blooms of speech 
most strange and wondrous, and rolled out with a 
far-off touch of Indian melody which made one think 
of copper -colored faces and plumed head-dresses. 



220 Qn Blue Mater, 

But more than by their language I was struck by 
their incredible flow of words, and by their mimic 
powers of gesture and intonation ; especially when 
they grew warm in describing their mighty moun- 
tains and their boundless plains. The blond coun- 
sellor, in particular, described the hunting of wild 
horses as an actor would recite a classic extract, with 
a vigor of movement and a melody of speech almost 
beyond belief, and all without art or affectation. I 
noticed in all their voices the charm of a metallic 
ring and a natural gift of modulation. The lady, 
especially, had a clear voice, with certain delightful 
head notes, w^hich sounded, to one who listened 
without looking, like the tones of a child. ^ Observ- 
ing, one evening, the strange effect she produced 
upon me by pronouncing in this way the name of 
the state of Jujui, she went on saying over other 
Indian names of mountains and rivers to amuse me, 
fairly laughing at my wonder : — " Ringuiririca," 
*^ Paranapicab^," " Ibirapit^-Mini." It was like the 
warbling of a nightingale. 

To them the voyage from America to Europe was 
as is to us the trip from Genoa to Leghorn ; and 
they had made it many times. For whatever con- 
ceit they may have of themselves, and whatever they 
may think of us, Europe is always the mother coun- 
try, the great country of their souls, and they are 
attracted to it. The delegate, accordingly, could 

' Voce bianca. 



Xlttle Galileo* 221 

count up eight transatlantic voyages, and the net of 
his love affairs must have been spread over a forest 
of masts. Still young, he had a long life behind 
him even in a public capacity ; for, being about forty, 
he had been at thirty editor-in-chief of an important 
Journal, a high ministerial oflScial, director of a bank, 
and government envoy to Paris on a financial mis- 
sion. And his was no exceptional case among the 
youth of his country. He said, and truly, that his 
country was in the hands of young men, since the 
Republic desired that the early spring sap which 
boiled in its veins should run in those of its servants. 
" You others," he said, " crowded into a narrow 
space, loaded down with history, with laws and with 
traditions, must go slowly, and let the old men take 
the lead; while we young fellows of three hundred 
years date, with a third part of South America for 
our country, and bound to make up for the time 
lost in fio-hts with the savag^es and in wars of social 
revolution of which we are only just now clear, we 
must take bold impatience for our guide, and drive 
on at full speed." So he went on pleasantly about 
the '' misuse " of old age in Europe. " It would 
seem," he said, " that with you gray hairs are a nec- 
essary qualification for certain trusts. There are 
some diseases which confer the ris^ht to certain 
honors. Gout, for instance, might almost seem to 
be all-powerful. Your youth is worn out in endless 
waiting ; you reach a place which requires a clear 



222 Qn JSlue Mater^ 

mind and steady nerve exactly at the time when 
these qualities fail you. You use up all your powers 
in climbing, and, by the time you are up, the clock 
strikes the hour for retiring." 

At this junctui'e the stewardess came to say it was 
time for the christening. The delegate ran to his 
stateroom to change his silk travelling cap for a 
coverino; somethins^ more formal. I moved towards 
the chart-room. In the forward part of the ship 
there was already a commotion, especially among 
the women, who all wanted to come up on the main 
deck to look on ; so much so that guards had to be 
placed at the ladders to prevent their overcrowding 
the place. There was a murmur of curiosity as great 
as at the baptism of a crown prince ; and no one re- 
marked the threatening rain squall which had already 
begun to darken the air. Entering the chart-room 
with two or three others, I had some difficulty in 
finding standing room. Before a table stood the 
captain, who represented the general government, 
together with his first officer and the commissary as 
witnesses. Round about against the wall were the 
blonde lady, the Argentine lady, the bi'ush lady, the 
pianist and her mother, the Brazilian lady, with her 
black nurse ; and about a dozen men, among them 
the Garibaldian, with his sad, stern face. The end 
window, which opened on the deck, was full of 
heads of steerage women, each above each, and beam- 
ing with delight at having secured good places. 







^. 



"Bfter tbem came tbc motbcv, bcI^ vounb tbe waist 
bs tbe buncbbacf? sailor." 



2 24 On Blue Mater* 

Beliind them was heard the murmur of the crowd. 
On the table were the ship's muster-roll and log- 
book lying open ; a tray with a glass of water and a 
salt cellai*, together with some printed birth-certifi- 
cate blanks. All wore an air of thoughtful com- 
posure. That strange room, hung with charts and 
gleaming here and there with nautical instruments, 
those twenty -four capital letters inscribed as an 
epitaj^h upon the signal-flag lockers, that group of 
persons so different and so unusual, those grave, 
immovable ofiicei's, that hum and stir of an invisible 
multitude, the dark sea line cutting across the open 
door, evoked a feeling at once of amazement and re- 
spect which declared itself in a suppressed whisper. 

In a few moments the tall priest arrived in a cope 
and stole which looked as if they had served to bap- 
tize the early Atlantic navigators ; and the attention 
of all was at once fixed upon him. He entered with 
bowed head, looking at no one ; then, approaching 
the table, and making the sign of the Cross, he began 
to mutter, with closed eyes and in the midst of a pro- 
found silence, the usual exorcisms [sic] over the salt 
and the water. Then putting a spoonful of salt into 
the water, he stirred it up, and dipping his finger 
therein, blessed those present. The women made 
the sign of the Cross, and the whispering began again. 

The baby did not immediately come, so the cap- 
tain sent the commissary to see after it. As the 
old man ill of pleurisy had grown worse, the new- 



^little (Balileo* 225 

delivered mother had been moved from the sick bay 
to ail empty stateroom in the second cabin. It was 
but a step, and the commissary reappeared at once 
saying : Vegnan — " Here they are." 

Up the ladder then came the father in a high 
state of triumph, in a clean shirt, freshly shaven, and 
with the little creature in his arms ; then came the 
young lady from Mestre, in her usual sea-green dress; 
the Argentine supporting her by the hand. After 
them, to the surprise of myself and of everybody, 
came the mother, pale but smiling, held round the 
waist by the hunchback sailor. '' There was no help 
for it," he growled. She would come in spite of the 
doctor's warnings, stubbornly determined to do here 
as she used to do at home, where do2yo do zorni la se 
gaveva sempre messo afar le sofagende : " She always 
went back to work after a couple of days." Last 
came one of the twins with a bit of candle in his 
hand. 

A kindly murmur of pity and of sympathy greeted 
the small Galileo who, with his little red face in a 
little white ruffled cap, a medal round his neck, and 
rolled up in a blue wrapper, slumbered placidly. 

The young lady, as soon as she entered, took the 

child from the father's arms, and with her own 

sweet sad smile showed him to the captain ; and I 

doubt if a single one there present failed to note the 

mournful contrast between the little creature that 

was just entering life and that excellent and noble 
15 



226 ©n JGlue Mater* 

being that was so soon to leave it. All looked for a 
moment at her alone, as with bent head she gazed 
into the baby face and gave token in her eyes of 
how great a treasure of motherly love was to be 
carried with her into the grave. 

The captain, in the curt tones of the Quartiere di 
Pre, and with the frown of one who is setting forth 
an indictment, read the birth certificate inscribed on 
the muster-roll of the ship : ^ 

Before me, captain commanding the steamship 
Galileo^ duly registered in the port of Genoa, this 
such and such a day of so-and-so, in the year eighteen 
hundred and so forth, at the hour of whatever it may 
have been, personally came and appeared so-and-so, 
doctor on board said steamer, accompanied by so- 
and-so, and so-and-so, did show to me a male child 
to which the woman so-and-so had Just given birth. 
And a smile was on every lip as we heard him 
read out that the native place of that poor little 
baby was lat. 4° north ; Ion. west of Paris 28°, 48' 
(26°, 28' W. Greenwich). 

In witness whereof, the captain went on to read, 
we have drawn up this present statement in writing, 
and placed it on record upon the muster-roll of this 
ship. Signed by 

And then the captain with two of his officers 
signed the record, and three certificates, one for the 
Italian Consul at Montevideo, one for the Recruiting 
Bureau of the port of Genoa, and one for the father. 




"Xast came one ot tbe twins witb a bit of can&le in bis banb. 



228 ©n JSlue Mater. 

He then handed the pen to the father who, with the 
sweat of that unusual toil upon his brow, managed to 
scrawl his name three times. 

At this moment the ship gave a slight roll, and 
the godmother staggered. The Argentine caught 
her arm to support her, and I could read in his eyes 
the pitying astonishment he felt at touching that 
fleshless limb. The sky had grown dark, the sea 
was of a livid color, and raindrops ^\ ere falling on 
the deck above. 

The priest stepped forward. 

The child was named. He crossed himself ; and, 
placing his large, hairy hand under the head of the 
sleeping infant, while the Argentine placed his hand 
on its breast, he duly made the three aspersions from 
the glass of water saying : 

" Galilee^ Petre, JolianneSy ego te haptizo in nomine 
Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sanctis 

Then : '' Galilee Petre, PoJiannes, vade inpacein^ et 
Dominus sit tecumr All the women at the window 
answered. Amen. 

Then he said the Agimus. 

I was looking the while at the mother who rolled 
her large eyes upon the baby, upon the officers, the 
instruments, upon that strange chapel; and who 
listened to the creak of the wheel and the distant 
whistling of the wind in the rigging, casting from 
time to time a furtive glance at the dark sea. She 
seemed to be greatly troubled lest there should be 



Xittle Galileo* 229 

something profane and ill-omened in a ceremony 
performed thus in haste in such a place in such 
weather. 

The priest ended with : " Ave Maria, gratia plena 
Dominus tecum. '''' 

'' Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, oi^a pro nohis,^^ re- 
sponded the women. 

At that very moment a most vivid flash lighted 
up the place, an ox gave a long bellow, the ship 
lurched and the mother began to weep. 

" Amen,'''' said the priest. 

'^ Amen,''^ was answered from without. 

All turned to the poor woman asking what was 
the matter, and biddins; her take courag^e. She 
wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and 
asked : ParcM ndl glie ga messo el sal sida hoca f 
"" Why did they not put salt on his mouth ? " 

They had to reason with her, to explain. It was a 
private baptism ; some things could not be done be- 
cause it was not in church — all could be completed 
in America — she must compose herself, the sacra- 
ment was valid all the same. 

Then she cheered up, kissed the baby fondly, 
made her acknowledgments and so went out. It 
was raining hard ; but the little train, followed by 
the Garibaldian, could hardly make its way to the 
second cabin. The hunchback had to make room 
with his elbows, and the twin had his candle-end 
snatched out of his hand. Everybody wished to 



230 Qn JSiue Mater* 

see, not the baby, but the sponsors; and have a 
notion of what presents the happy mother was 
likely to get. When they saw the young lady there 
was clapping of hands. Suddenly, a loud, harsh voice 
was heard : 

^' That 's right ! Truckle to the gentle folk, will 
you ! They stand sponsor at his chi'istening to-day, 
but they will let him perish of hunger when he 
grows up ! Idiots ! " 

It was the old tribune in the green jacket, stand- 
ing upright on the hatch of the women's cabin. At 
once several persons left the crowd of gazers. Some 
cried shame ; some echoed him. But the Joyous 
shouts of the children drowned their voices. 

The mother had hardly reached the stateroom 
when she sank down upon a box, exhausted. The 
father placed the infant in a berth, and the god- 
parents brought out the presents. Then began a 
duet of voices in wonder and gratitude : '' But 
what is this ! You give yourselves too much trouble. 
You make us blush ! How good, how kind you are ! 
Is that for me, and this too ? The Lord be praised ! " 
And the father, in an access of gratitude, bent over 
the new-born in the berth, exclaiming : Vo?'d strussi- 
arme, voro suar sangue per ti, vissare mie. '' I '11 
work myself to death for thee, I '11 sweat blood for 
my darling," and this in a heartfelt tone which 
promised a life of labor and sacrifice for the little 
creature, born between heaven and earth, and half- 



Xittle (Baltleo 231 

way between the country he had left and an unknown 
land ; with no dependence in the world but the 
couragje and the muscles of his father. And then : — 
Tazi^ vecia mata — " Be quiet, you old fool," he 
harshly cried to his weeping wife and flung his arms 
around her neck. 

The young lady then turned to the Garibaldian, 
who was looking out of the door, and, calling his 
attention to that embrace, — "Family affection !" she 
said with a I'eproving gesture of her forefinger and a 
kindly smile. 

He made no answer. 



CHAPTER XIII 



A SEA OF FIRE 



^\\\ss\\\\\\\st^/y//y^^^^^^ 







UT the christening, like the festi- 
val of crossing the line, gave only 
a brief truce to the irritation 
which was creeping over the emi- 
grants by reason of the increasing 
heat ; particularly over the wo- 
men, who were growing hour by hour more sick and 
tired of a mode of life so foreio:n to their habits. 
Several days since, the disorder of petty larceny had 
broken out, and with it a general fever of suspicion. 
Towels, slippers, clothes, disappeared as if by en- 
chantment; those who were robbed thought they 
recognized their property in the hands of one or an- 
other, and at every moment a couple of scolding slat- 
terns, leading their children by the hand and with 
the corpus delicti under their arms, followed by their 
husbands and their witnesses, would be coming to 
the commissary to demand justice. Then there was 
trial and pleading in due form. Perhaps it was a 



232 



H Sea of five. 233 

handkerchief, from which some thievish woman had 
taken the mark, or a shoe with the maker's label 
torn off. The accused party denied everything, in- 
voking the Saviour and the Madonna ; the accuser 
obstinately persisted, calling down the rest of the 
Calendar; then a couple of experts had to be called 
in to examine the handkerchief, or a cobbler to pro- 
nounce upon the shoe. But the Piedmontese would 
have none of the Neapolitan experts, the Neapolitan 
utterly repudiated North Italy ; the husbands took 
the part of their wives ; the witnesses and the by- 
standers were for their own provinces. There were 
interminable disputes between stolid mountaineers, 
who urged a hundred times the same argument in 
exactly the same phrase, and voluble men of the 
plains, who belched forth words in torrents. Often- 
times they did not understand one another, and an 
interpreter was called in. Sometimes search had to 
be made. Then the accused began to weep, the chil- 
dren to whimper, and the men to threaten : '' Wait 
until we get on shore, you scum of the earth ! " " Do 
you want me to pitch you into the boiler, you ac- 
cursed gallows' bird ?" "I '11 throw your insides to 
the fishes ! " " You ! why, the whole ship knows 
you ! " '^ And as for you, the whole Atlantic Ocean 
would not wash you clean ! " 

The poor commissary racked his brains to under- 
stand and to do justice ; but in whatever way he de- 
cided there was always a cry of " partiality." If he 



234 ©n Blue Mater* 

pronounced against a ISTeapolitan or a Sicilian these 
said, " Of course ! the other is your countryman ! " 
If he gave it against his own countryman all the 
north country people cried out : ^' Yes, yes, no doubt. 
Those creatures have ways — such ways — of making 
friends." It was useless to ar<2:ue with them. '^ But 
listen, — don't you remember how I decided in favor 
of one of your friends yesterday because she was in 
the right ? " No use. He had done so because she 
was pretty, or all alone, or because — in short there 
must have been some other reason. And on both 
sides a chorus of growls : ^' I wonder if we are not 
Italian as well as they, though we don't speak 
Genoese. They are the ones to give orders now." 
And it was the more ]3ity to see these people, so far 
from their own country, betray in every little dis- 
pute family rancor, race antipathy ; to hear with 
what devilish ingenuity they wounded each the other 
in his pride of citizenship, digging up old-time griev- 
ances and reproaches and nursing them back to life 
as it were, so as to carry them to America in their 
full vigor. After every dispute the parties sep- 
arated full of spite and enmity which they in- 
stilled into their friends and country people of both 
sexes when they went forward again. These grad- 
ually divided into two factions, which glowered at 
each other, and insulted each other — moving out of 
the way as if from fear of vermin or making a great 
show of buttoning up their pockets so as not to lose 



H Sea of ffire, 235 

a wallet or a handkerchief. Alas ! alas ! The com- 
missary with all his diligence could not hear every 
cause, and with all his patience had sometimes to 
plant his teeth in the second joint of his forefinger. 
The tall Bolognese, whose haughtiness rose with the 
temperature, would have had the whole shij) searched 
because somebody had carried off her tortoise-shell 
comb ; and threatened the Society di Navigazione 
with vengeance at the hands of her brother the 
journalist, as soon as she landed in America. The 
poor lady of the black silk dress, was in despair be- 
cause someone had stolen from her a silver pin, the 
gift of her sister she said ; but she did not dare have 
recourse to the commissary for fear of some vendetta. 
And thei'e wei'e women who, not so much from fear 
as from a desii e to exhibit a spiteful mistrust of their 
neighbors, slept with all their property under them 
or in their arms — at the risk of being misunderstood, 
all the same. In short it was maddening. 

And yet the disputes about thievery, real or 
invented, were not the most difficult to deal with. 
The worst was that all this irritation had induced a 
most extraordinary touchiness which broke out on 
the smallest occasion, so that they were constantly 
coming to the commissary to complain of some lack 
of due respect ; and that gentleman had to sit in 
judgment upon questions of manners and breeding. 
The poor hump-backed sailoi* said he could stand it 
no longer : Dixan die gli^e de ladre ! (dicono che ci son 



236 Qn Blue Mater. 

delle ladre) — he never spoke of any but women. 
" Thieves amono^ them ! of course there are ; what 
do they expect ? But if we refused to carry thieves 
we should not make enough to pay for coal — Sink 
the whole set of them ! " As things stood, a serious 
scuffle might break out at any moment. The even- 
ing before, as soon as the christening was over, two 
women had had a fight in a corner of the cabin, — 
quite quietly, like ladies. And this evening the poor 
bookkeeper came to worse grief still. Having ven- 
tured to remonstrate wnth a couple of emigrants w^ho 
were making gestures behind the Genoese girl and 
raisinsi; much vuli^ar laus^hter, these fellows fell 
upon him and would have handled him very roughly 
had not the Garibaldian, passing that way, rescued 
the poor creature, but not before his neck-cloth was 
torn to pieces. ^^ All due to the electric centres of 
the globe " said the commissary. ^' And," he went on 
to remark, '' worse remains behind." 

The Garibaldian, when he had released the book- 
keeper, returned to the midship deck — from which 
he had seen the disturbance — and passed near me. 
I was inclined to ask for particulars, but his stern, 
cold look repelled, as usual, every advance. Dur- 
ing the first few days he had exchanged a word 
or two with me ; now he hardly made a sign by way 
of salute, sometimes he made no ^vj^n. It seemed 
that the ever-increasing tedium of forced companion- 
ship in that life on board ship embittered still more 



H Sea of iFire* 237 

the aversion for his kind which he cherished in his 
heart. The more his familiai'ity, always taciturn 
and respectful, with the young lady from Mestre 
increased, the more solitary and self-contained he 
became for the rest of us, as if that gentle intercourse 
had made his philosophy more gloomy rather than 
more cheerful. He now spoke to no one. He would 
pass hours leaning over the taffrail looking at the wake 
of the Galileo as if it were an endless written scroll 
unrolled before his eyes to tell the history of the world. 
And his haughty bluntness had produced its usual 
effect upon the others ; at first antipathy and a show 
of equal scorn ; then, when the steadiness of his de- 
meanor showed that all this was the effect of habit 
and in no way personal, there ensued a feeling of 
respect and awe which showed itself in the readi- 
ness with which the look of any fellow-passenger 
turned to the sea or the rigging when he cast his 
eyes upon them to see if they were contemplating 
him, — and if so, how. 

It seemed as if a kind of sympathy had arisen for 
the haughty creature that not only did nothing to 
attract such a feeling but spared no pains to repel it. 
It was because sadness, joined with beauty and 
strength, has its own charm as indicating a noble 
scorn for the easy gratification which the one and 
the other can procure ; and because, moreover, 
there shone out of his eye that dark light which 
comes directly from the soul and gives token of the 



238 ©n Blue Mater* 

virtue which is so much admired and feared — cour- 
age. As for myself, the more I kept out of his way 
the more I desired to know him. I felt for him that 
affection, born of esteem and awe, which renders 
the carelessness of its object quite intolerable, and 
which would almost make a man debase himself so 
only he could overcome it. This the more on board 
ship where one must constantly be thrown in with 
the person, and where his indifference may be re- 
marked and commented upon to our disadvantage. 
When he was not by I tried to pei'suade myself that 
his soul and his life did not correspond with his 
aspect, or my idea of it ; and that, if I had known 
his inner soul, I should only have had one more 
delusion to add to the thousands out of which the 
history of our friendships is made up. But when I 
saw him again it was all in vain ; I could have 
sworn that the man could never have done a base 
thing, that he did indeed scorn all human vanities, 
and that even now he would be ready to give his 
life, at once and without a thought of ambition, for 
a generous idea. I submitted to his superior spirit 
as to a magnetic force ; and, while I felt a certain 
annoyance and even humiliation, I should have liked 
to let him see it or even to have confessed it frankly. 
But his face was a walled-up gate for every one. 

He seemed indifferent to the great shows of na- 
ture. I did not perceive even a gleam upon his 
countenance at sight of one of the most splendid 



H Sea ot Site. 239 

and amazing sunsets that we had seen since entering 
the tropics. The sky was clear from east to west, 
and the sun just ready to dip his rim in a sea as of 
red-hot coals; and, huge, as if he had come a million 
leagues nearer to the eai'th, was streaked from side to 
side with a single thin black cloud, which made him 
look divided as by miracle into two burning hemi- 
spheres. And there rose at the same time to an 
amazing height in the air eight wondrous rays, of 
veiled light but liveliest color, passing from white 
to rosy red and so to softest green, which lasted 
after his disk had disappeared ; and, covering a third 
part of the vault of heaven, seemed like an immense 
glowing hand that was to grasp the earth. But we 
wondered more when, turning round at a sign from 
the captain, we saw eight othei* rays over against 
and reflected from these upon the heavens ; less 
bright, but with the same vanishing tints, as if it 
were the dawn preceding a second undreamed - of 
sun that was to rise as the other disappeared. And 
the white sea took all the colors of the sky and 
glistened as if with millions of floating pearls. 

But that animal of an advocate — he only — never 
looked. He turned his back to the sunset, he never 
j'aised his eyes to the reflection. He hated nature, 
and wished to show it ; for that sun that went down 
into the sea was going into bad company, and he 
was not going to be answerable foi' either. In the 
midst of our admiring silence he was peevishly be- 



240 



©n Blue Mater. 



moaning himself to tbefii"st officer about the crim-i-nal 
carelessness of the company, which did not keep up 
with the life-saving inventions of the day. " Eighty 
per cent, of those who suffer wreck ai'e drowned," 
he said, " through fault of the owners. Why did 




"Ibe tuine& bis bacft to tbe sunset. 



not the company provide the proper number of life- 
preservers ? Why were there but ten boats, hardly 
enough to save one passenger in four ? Why were 
not the men exercised in improvising life rafts? 
Why were there no ' Gwyn ' pumps ? Why not 
adopt Captain Hurst's double deck? Where were 
the Peake life-boats and the Thompson safety chairs ? 
They, the gentlemen of the company, drowned thou- 
sands of worthy men and let inventors starve, shrug- 



H Sea of tfire. 241 

ging their shoulders and laughing in their avaricious 
sleeves at every new means that was proposed to 
save the pre-ci-ous life of man ! " 

This timorous little dotard knew a wondrous deal 
about such matters, and was a master of knotting. 
The agent, who found out everything, imparted to 
me his suspicions that the poor old man had some 
stupendous life-preserving machine in his room — per- 
haps several; keeping them in a huge chest which 
no steward had ever seen open. He himself, too, 
going there to make a little visit, had been rather 
abruptly refused entrance, and shrewdly suspected 
that the old fellow^ was at that moment trying on 
one of his amazing gutta-percha conti'ivances. 

Meanwhile the advocate was warming up, and 
going on more volubly than ever. "It is these 
companies," he said, " that give us to the sharks. 
The marine code is a farce. There oui'ht to be 
something like a law enforced to send them off to 
rot in the galleys." 

The first officer objected ; and the advocate re- 
joined more hotly than before ; so that there soon 
was a little group about them, teasing and making 
fun of the poor scared valetudinarian, whom the hot 
night was quite driving from his propriety. 

But the talk was suddenly cut short by a cry 

from an emigrant on the upper deck — "The sea is 

on fire ! " 

All turned towards the water. The ship was in- 
16 



242 ®n Blue Mater* 

deed sailing over a burniug sea, splashing from her 
sides myriads of topaz lights, handf ills of diamonds ; 
and leaving behind her, like a street of molten gold, 
a long streak of liquid phosphorus which seemed to 
issue from her stern as from a flamino; mine. Here 
there was gold ; there there was silver ; the luminous 
space extended far and wide, softening down into a 
whitish glow, making one think of what the Dutch 
call the milky sea, often beheld by sailors on the 
Pacific Ocean, in the Bay of Bengal, and among the 
Molucca Islands. But close by us the water lived 
and burned, a beauteous thing to see, a coruscation 
of intertwining flakes of fire, a quivering sweep of 
little stars and suns that rushed at the ship and 
tumbled back again, that leaped and fell but disap- 
peared not, giving the wave trans23arent splendor as 
if lighted from below by the fabled stars Pluto and 
Proserpina, that gleam at the centre of the earth. It 
was easy to imagine how this resplendent sea should 
have turned the brain of those mariners of old time 
who were the first to see it. The dazzled eye was 
fastened upon it and could not turn away ; as if all 
the riches of the universe were floating there. One 
longed to thrust in a hand and draw it out full of 
pearls, to plunge down and come up again more re- 
fulgent than an Eastern monarch. We all were 
incited to say queer things, to make strange com- 
parisons ; the imagination seemed to wallow in that 
boundless surging flood of treasure which sparkled 



H Sea of five. 243 

round us in tempting mockery. But what was our 
wonder when after an hour of this there came a 
school of dolphins, swimming and dai'ting in the 
midst of this fire, and leaping around the ship as if 
to vie with us in joy. Then it was nothing but one 
whirl of spai'ks, of fiery foam and blazing spray, a 
dance of constellations, a madness of splendor, which 
made the emigrants shriek with delight as if they 
had been so many children. 

One man alone was ill at ease — the husband of 
the Swiss lady. He made his appearance on the 
quarter-deck with flushed face and sullen mien. 
But he had brought it upon himself. He had gone 
up on the midship-deck among a ci'owd of peasants 
and had begun to set forth how all this phosphores- 
cence was occasioned by a mass of microscopic crea- 
tures called by some unearthly name ; in other words, 
that every one of these sparks was an animal. This 
time, however, he had piled it up too high, and his 
audience had scouted him. 

But now a new spectacle attracted our admiring 
gaze. The sky had cleared on every side and we 
saw for the first time on the horizon the four lovely 
stars of the Southern Cross, unknown to the 

" Lonely region of the North," 

and twinkling amid the black solitude of the Coal 
Sacks, those deserts of the Antarctic sky. On one 
side glowed the Alpha and the Beta of the Centaur, 



244 



m Blue Mater* 



on the other that stupendous sun, Canopus, in the 
constellation of the Ship. The spacious firmament 
was cloudless, still, and brilliant. The Northern Pole 
Star had sunk beneath the ocean. 







.A. 



,%-m 










CHAPTER XIV 



A BLUE SEA 




T this point, the 17th day, I find 
noted on my Berghaus map that 
we are to pass the famous line 
drawn by Pope Alexander VI. to 
divide the world between Spain 
and Portugal ; and then these 
words : " Fine weather in the house and out of 
doors." In fact, the humor of that multitude of 
emigrants did follow the changing complexion of 
the sea with wonderful fidelity. Just as when we 
are speaking with a powerful personage from whom 
we are asking a favor, and who can do us an injury, 
our countenance involuntarily reflects every expres- 
sion that passes over his, so the thoughts and the 
talk of all those people were bright or dark, yellow 
or gray or blue, according to the color of the sea. 
Most rightly do we talk of " the face of the waters," 
for its smooth or wrinkled surface, the shadows that 
glance over it, the pale or sombre tints that cover 

245 



246 Qn Blue Mater* 

it on a sudden, do resemble to a marvellous degree 
the movements of a human face in which are shown, 
as in a glass, the stirring of an unstable, treacherous 
soul. How many changes there are in a few hours, 
and yet fair weather all the time ! The ocean would 
look old and wearied out, and then in a few instants 
would grow young again ; a thrill of life would run 
through it, and change all in a moment; then it 
w^ould settle down once more, — be thoughtful, pen- 
sive, tired of everything, go to sleep ; then up it 
would start as if disturbed, angry, affronted by that 
nutshell full of ants that was passing over it ; frown- 
ing as if it meant to strike, and then subside into 
scornful, smiling indifference once more, as who 
should say : '' There, there, pass on ; I forgive you." 
And the aspect of the ship changed with these 
changes, as if those sixteen hundred persons had had 
one and the same nervous system. At ten o'clock, 
all lying about, speechless, and with the look of 
those who have nothing more to hope for in this life, 
they gave the Galileo the appearance of a floating 
hospital ; an hour later, by reason of a breeze that 
cleared the horizon, or a ray of sunlight that darted 
down upon the forecastle, all on foot, all in motion, 
amid such a hum of joyous talk as was amazing even 
to themselves. Then, too, their disposition towards 
us, and the reception they gave us in their part of 
the ship, would vary as phase succeeded phase upon 
the sea. In the morning, sour looks, backs rudely 



U JBlue Sea, 247 

turned, words growled out that meant a rooted hatred 
of the signori. And then, in tlie evening of the 
same day, kindly glances, children bid make way, 
and even friendly words thrown out as if with a de- 
sire to get into conversation. And in this respect 
we of the after-cabin did just as they did. Some- 
times we would look at them with pitying eye, and 
say within ourselves: "Poor worthy creatures! 
They are our blood after all. What would we not 
do to be of service to them ! How excellent and 
admirable to be loved by them ! " And when, a 
little later, the clouds shut down and the sultry air 
oppressed us, we would think : " Brutes ! They 
would strike us dead where we stand if they could. 
And, like idiots, we go and try to coax them ! " 

But that day the sea was blue, and through the 
moral transparency, so to speak, of these j^eople's 
good-humor, there was many a new psychological 
observation to be made. For please observe ; be- 
neath the rough web of mere sj^ite and hatred there 
had been woven in tkese sixteen days another, made 
up of sympathy, of love, of intrigue, far more intri- 
cate and far more highly colored than the first. The 
commissaiy was cognizant of everything, or almost 
everything ; and this either by direct evidence or 
from what was told him, whether he asked it or no, 
by fifteen or twenty gossips, who knew every bit of 
scandal, and who filled the same ofiice in the steer- 
age that the mother of the piano player and the 



248 Qn JBlue Mater* 

agent did in the after-cabin. It was a joy beyond 
price to hear this gentleman, as he stood on the 
bridge with his eye upon the throng, run over the 
gamut (sfilar la corona) of the passions, and point 
out one by one the persons he alluded to, his speech 
slow and measured, like a justice of the peace ; and 
he most grave and reverend in appearance, but most 
comical in fact. The fore-deck, all black with peo- 
ple, was spread beneath like a vast roofless stage, 
fanned just then by a gentle breeze, in which the 
clothes hung out to diy, and the kerchiefs and caps 
of the women, were flapping to and fro. 

And he told us about it. There were not a few 
flirtations, and these, being forced to keep within the 
bounds of the strictest propriety, had burned and 
blazed up, if one may say so, visibly, as they never 
do in the city or in the country. There was no 
young woman, married or not, but had her wooers, 
some timid, some bold and pressing, all more or less 
in love, and all more or less encouraged openly or on 
the sly. This enforced continence and the constant 
propinquity of so many women, the disorder of their 
dress in the morning or during the long midday 
slumber, and the frequent exposure of maternity, 
had even roused passions for peasant women who 
had seen a half century of life, and who on land 
would hardly have been noticed at all. The young 
girls, if they were not absolute frights, had each 
her circle of adorers, some of whom, after a while, 



H Blue ^ea. 249 

grew tired, and went off to dangle after a new 
beauty, leaving place for somebody else, if he cliose 
to occupy it, and so the groups were always changing. 
There were passing fancies and Platonic contempla- 
tions whose object was to kill the time ; and there 
were comic flirtations got up to amuse the company. 
But there were men who fell in love so seriously 
and so deeply that their brutal boldness almost de- 
fied the light of day and the regulations of disci- 
pline ; who were as jealous and resolute as Arabs; 
who would brook no rival ; and who threatened 
rio;ht and left with naked knife. These had all 
their posts of vantage, from which, during the day, 
when they were forced to be discreet, they sat 
glaring at the fair author of their pangs like falcons 
at their prey ; and even cursed and menaced those 
who passed in front of them. There were even 
some grizzled heads, some fifty-years-old plowmen, 
rhinoceros-hided, who might be supposed to have 
outgrown the passions of youth, and who were yet 
amorous. One of these, a North countryman, with 
a muzzle like a boar, had made a spectacle of him- 
self over the peasant woman of Capracotta, whose 
round face, like an ill- washed Madonna, flushing 
under the reflection of a rose-colored kerchief, proved 
attractive to many others ; her own tall, bearded 
husband to the contrary notwithstanding. The two 
singing girls, who went about all day laughing with 
everybody, and pulled about by everybody, seemed 



250 



Qn Blue Mater, 



to take a special pleasure in flirting with well-be- 
haved husbands. The women hated them with a 




perfect hatred, and apostrophized them without stint 
or measure before their faces and behind their backs, 
threatening to go to the commissary and have the 
place cleared of them. 



H Blue Sea* 251 

But these were not the only ones. There were cer- 
tain " bold-faced creatures from the city " who went 
about in a most shameless mannei*. The women 
hated above all others that ape of a negress that 
belonged to the Brazilians. She only came to meals 
and in the evening; but she had roused a perfect 
volcano of repulsive passion. " How on earth did 
she do it," they said, " with that flat nose and general 
ugliness ? " A cou23le of husbands had already come 
to blows about her. The wife of one had made a 
scene that was heard down in the engine-room ; and 
the wife of the other had given him a sounding 
backhander, for which, however, he had reimbursed 
heron the spot, undertaking to pay the interest when 
he got on shore. The big Bologuese, it is true, did 
preserve a certain decorum. " She wished," said the 
commissary, '' to carry intact into another world her 
name oi ragaza unestay It had got about rather 
freely that her heart had been touched by a Swiss 
emigrant; she put on the dignity of an archduchess, 
all the more dignified and scornful as those face- 
tious surmises about the contents of her mysterious 
pouch grew more frequent and more insolent. 

There were at the same time many others who 
in love matters did set a good example ; girls well 
brought up, or at all events modest, properly courted 
by decent young fellows who did the bosom friend 
or the serious wooer in all form, and who, with 
languishing but respectful looks, spent the day tied 



252 Qn Blue Mater* 

to the fair one's apron-striDg under the eyes of her 
parents. But gallantry in general took a tone and 
mien calculated to educate, rapidly and altogether 
badly, the crowd of young boys and of girls from ten 
to fourteen who were on board, and who in that pro- 
miscuous throng saw and heard everything. The 
lowest instincts, kept under at home by hard toil, or 
dormant in the quiet solitude of the fields, were 
awakened little by little like adders in the bosoms of 
all that crowded company, idle, and heated by the 
tropical sun. The result was vile in its form, but 
in substance it was much the same as is handed 
round and swallowed like gilded pills in many a 
highly respectable drawing-room and nobody shocked 
or scandalized. -^^ ^ * 

Just as we were talking of him, my good crook- 
back came by with a flask of oil in his hand ; and, 
following perhaps the course of his own thoughts, 
he said to me : Scicl sente ; V e jpezo una hionda 
die sette hrunne. '' One blonde is worse than seven 
brunettes. — — But what now ? " 

It was the boys on the bow that were clapping 
their hands, as the topsails, sky-sails, and spencers, 
fore and aft, were set, and the ship with her white 
wings spread, sailed through the blue sea in all the 
majesty of her beauty. At the same moment, as if 
to greet us, a flight of Brazilian water birds came, 
made three circles round the topsail yards, and then 
disappeared. The Galileo had never seemed so beau- 



H Blue Sea, 253 

tiful. Huge she was and powerful, but the fine lines 
of her hull and her great length gave her the grace 
of a gondola. Her lofty masts with their network 
of cordage seemed trunks of gigantic branchless 
palms entwined with leafless vines, while the wide- 
open purple mouths of the wind funnels gave the 
idea of colossal flowers, attracted by America instead 
of by the sun. Her sides w^ere rough and black with 
tar, her deck bristled with ironwork, a dense cloud 
of smoke hung over all, and the place looked like a 
vast manufactoiy ; but it was relieved by the pale 
blue boats made fast above the rail, by the white, 
swelling wind-sails, by the light bridge swaying 
against the sky, by a hundred gleams from metal, 
wood, and glass; by a thousand objects, strange in 
shape, but every one a useful implement, an orna- 
ment, a power, an industry, a defence. And the jar 
of the engine, the dull stroke of the cranks, the 
plunge of the screw, the clanking of the rudder chains, 
the hiss of the log line, the dry rattle of the shrouds, 
the tinkling of glass and china in the racks, all made 
up a strange, vague sort of music which charmed the 
ear and entered into the soul like the mysterious 
voices of invisible beincys that were hoverino^ over us 
and urging us to labor and to strife. The deck rises 
and falls under our feet as if it were a body with 
life, the huge frame makes unexpected and incompre- 
hensible leaps, like the sti'ivings of fear, rude un- 
graceful jumps, as if from vexation, and movements 



254 ©n Blue Mater^ 

of the bow like the shaking of an enormous wonder- 
ing head ; and then, for a long space scarcely seem- 
ing to touch the waves, will move so still and evenly 
upon the slow ground-swell that an ivory ball would 
hardly roll about upon the deck. 

But on she goes and never stops, through cloud 
and darkness, right against the winds and waves, 
with a whole people on her back, with five thousand 
tons within her bulk — from one world to the other, 
guided without mistake by a little bar of steel that 
might serve to cut open the leaves of a book, and by 
a man who moves a wheel of wood, with a turn of 
the hand. We go over in thought the history of 
navigation, and as, rising from the log to the raft, 
from the canoe to the row galley, and so up through 
all the forms of the ship, with the improvement 
which centuries have given it, we stop before the 
last development to compare it with the early germ, 
our hearts swell with amazement and admiration, 
and we ask ourselves what marvel of human skill is 
greater than this. More wonderful is the ship than 
the ocean which she cleaves and leaves behind ; and 
to its ceaseless, unrelenting threats she replies with 
the tireless clank of her brazen joints : " You are vast, 
but you are a brute. I am little, but I am a genius. 
You separate worlds, I bind them together. You 
surround me, but I pass through. You are might, 
but I am knowledge." 

Alas for poor human pride ! While I was yet in 



a :Blue Sea. 



255 



the midst of these reflections a thrill ran from stem 
to stern; and, straightway, there were a hundred 




^oves a wbccl of \voo& with a turn of tbe ban&." 

scared faces and a hundred eager voices in mutual 
inquiry. The ship was coming to a stand-still. Many 



256 Qn JBlue Matet^ 

rushed to the bulwarks and looked over, they knew 
not why; some ran to the captain; some ladies got 
ready to faint. The ship stopped. Impossible to 
desci'ibe the grim effect of this sudden quiet, and how 
like a bi'oken toy seemed that enormous vessel im- 
movable and silent in the midst of the ocean ! How 
quickly did our confidence in the strength and power 
of man vanish away. And at the same time was re- 
vealed that evil trait in man's nature which delights 
in another's suffering, as some passengers spread a tale 
of how the boiler was going to burst, and the keel 
was broken and the water was coming into the hold. 
The women screamed. The relieved firemen, coming 
on deck, stripped to the waist and black with coal, 
were surrounded and besieo!:ed with fnVhtened in- 
quiries. The officers went about saying things which 
were lost in the outcries of the crowd. At last the 
reassuring news was known fore and aft that it was 
nothing ; — one of the bearings of the main shaft was 
hot — it was being put right — we would go on again 
in an hour. We all breathed again and some who 
had turned pale shrugged their shoulders and said 
they had thought so from the first ; but the greater 
part continued thoughtful, as after a wound or an ir- 
regular beating of the heart. That engine, which no 
one had noticed before, became the theme of talk for 
hundreds, all full of an anxious respect for it that 
was almost ridiculous. For after all it is the heart 
of the ship, is it not ? The officers are the brains, 



H JSlue Sea, 257 

and if the brains go wrong the man may not die, 
but if the heart stop, good-bye. And what was the 
engineer's name. He looked like a clever, experienced 
man — never spoke — must have studied a good deal 
— he would pull us through — no fear. All praised 
him without knowing anything about him. But the 
mill-owner wore a pitying smile and shook his head 
as he swaggered about the deck with his great stom- 
ach. — ^^ Italian machinists! Well that it was no 
worse ! American or English, yes ; but the national 
screwiness would not hear of them." — Faltan pata- 
C6'7i(?.s, said the priest. "Too poor." But in half an 
hour the conversation languished. That promised 
hour never would come to an end, and uneasiness 
supervened once more. " Does it take all that time 
to cool a bearing ? " said many who did not even 
know w^hat such a thing was like. '^ What on earth 
are they about down there ? Did ever anyone see 

such a lot of good-for-nothing ! " Ah ! at last 

the machine gives sign of life, the screw turns over, 
the sea foams — Heaven be praised, we are moving 
again ! 

And yet to me the most remarkable thing in this 
episode was a look exchanged by two persons. So 
true is it that the manifestations of the human soul 
constitute the most attractive spectacle which man 
can contemplate. At the very instant of the unex- 
pected stoppage, wdiile yet no one knew the cause of 
it, and there was good reason to fear some serious 



258 ®n Blue Mater* 

accident had happened — and every one did fear it — 
I happened to be on the piazzetta and saw my next- 
door neighbor below turn to look at his wife, who 
was above him, leaning on the rail of the poop-deck ; 
and she, as if she had expected his glance, fixed her 
eyes upon him. It w^as one of those looks which 
reveal the soul as the ray under the spectroscope 
reveals the chemical nature of the substance that 
yields the flame. It was not anxiety, it was not fear, 
not even a hesitating curiosity. It was a cold, tran- 
quil glance, w^hich showed the utter indifference of 
each for the other, even in the face of an unknown 
danger which might end in death. Each had said 
to the other with the eyes : " I know that it would 
be nothing to you to lose me. You know that I 
would care just as little about parting with you." 
After which the wife moved from the rail and the 
husband looked another way. 

This would have been their last farewell if a mis- 
chance had separated them forever. But what could 
have come to pass between these two that they 
should hate one another thus and yet I'emain united ? 
This question kept coming back to my mind in spite 
of all that I could do. And I reached the conclusion 
that there must be children in the case that forced 
them to keep together ; most probably an only son, 
a bond more powerful than when there are several. 
That eternal, forced, almost trembling smile that she 
wore inspired everyone with more or less repug- 



H Blue Sea* 259 

nance, although she, divining this sentiment, strove 
to give her countenance a look of kindly sadness as 
if she were in grief but resigned to misconstruction. 
He spoke with hardly anyone. He appeared em- 
barrassed and ill at ease, as are all those who know 
that their trouble is plainly enough to be seen, but 
are ashamed of it and angry at being pitied. One 
could see, moreover, by a certain fleeting expression 
in his eye and mouth, that he had been in times 
past of a frank, open disposition and inclined to 
cheerful friendliness — perhaps even a really good 
fellow ; but that all the springs of his nature were 
broken or worn out in this long contest with an ad- 
versary stronger and moi'e obstinate than he. It 
was easy in fact to see that he feared his wife and 
that she did not fear him. This was discernible in 
the uneasy glances which he cast around whenever 
he exchansfed a few words with the Aro;entine or 
the Brazilian lady, with whom he was on those terms 
of sad and kindly respect which a man not happy 
with his own wife is apt to observe towards those 
of other men ; perceiving in each of them the image 
of a happiness, or at least a content, which cannot be 
his. And this shrinking as of an ill-treated child 
was all the more piteous when seen in a tall, strong 
man, who even yet bore in his countenance the traces 
of manly beauty. A close look at him showed that 
frequent trembling of the lip, usual in men accus- 
tomed to subdue anger, and the long, fixed look at 



26o Qn Blue Mater. 

vacancy, which means deep melancholy and contem- 
plated suicide. And he never displayed weariness 
or vexation, like the other passengers ; he seemed as 
indifferent to time as a condemned criminal. I 
should not have wondered to see him, at any mo- 
ment, fling himself under the crank of the engine. 
Perhaps at home some occupation, or some work, or 
some vice, if you please, may have served as a diver- 
sion and enabled him for a few hours, at all events, 
to be out of sight of his wife. But there, on those 
half-dozen square yards of deck, forced to see and 
be in constant contact with her, to hate and to be 
hated in open view of everybody, to breathe her 
breath in a dark and airless dungeon, — this was soli- 
tary confinement, the oar, the pillory, all in one. 
And not a soul to speak to. He had not confided 
anything to a single individual, or it would have 
been known ; for everyone w^as devouringly anxious 
to penetrate his secret. And she, too, said not a 
word. They were two sealed sepulchres, in each of 
which there was a living monster that writhed, but 
asked for neither aid nor pity. 

That night, however, I thought I was about to 
penetrate the mystery. The breeze had fallen, the 
sea slept ; so that late in the evening, when we went 
below, the ship moved on without strain or creak; 
and the slightest sound could be heard in the next 
stateroom ; just as in those queer little inns with 
wooden partitions in certain cities on the Rhine, in 



H JSlue Sea* 261 

which, as travellers are warned by their guide-books? 
"it is as well to be discreet." When I entered my 
room I heard the muffled voice of the lady speaking 
rapidly in a harsh, monotonous tone, recalling the past, 
and mentionino; facts and names as if she were over- 
whelming him with reproach ; and then the husband 
saying in a low voice from time to time, "Not true, 
not true, not true ! " But as her upbraidings grew 
more bitter, his denials too became more fierce and 
hurried. The unhappy man, unable to cope with 
her, and not caring any longer, as it w^ould seem, to 
preserve his manly dignity, was reduced to the 
miserable, womanish defence of saying the same 
thinoj over and over ao^ain, lest his silence should 
bring worse upon him. But suddenly he started 
up and poured out a flood of words, unintelligible, 
furious, outrageous, desperate; ending in a snarl like 
a mad dog that made me shudder. He was biting 
his fingers ; and she only laughed. I stood a mo- 
ment expecting the sound of blows or the gasping of 
the woman as he seized her by the throat. But I 
heard instead his voice in humble supplication, pro- 
nouncing over and over again a single name — Attilio 
— the voice of a man who acknowledo:es himself 
beaten, who begs for mercy, who yields everything, 
so only one favor may be granted him. Attilio must 
have been a son, and his father one of those men, 
otherwise strong of mind, whom paternal love makes 
timid, and bows with pinioned arms beneath the 



262 On Blue Mater* 

scourge of a woman capable of stabbing him to death 
at that one weak point. It seemed impossible that 
the woman should not have responded with some 
affection to that piteous cry ; and I listened closely ; 
but there was no answer. A berth creaked; — the 
lady wHfe had gone to bed without a word. Then I 
heard a noise as of a hand searching in a valise ; and 
I thought, perhaps, he might be getting out a re- 
volver. But she was silent. The poor wretch had 
not even the sorry comfort of being supposed capable 
of doing anything desperate. While I was anxiously 
awaiting the end of all this, there came someone to 
the door of the stateroom, and by the swinging lamp 
I recognized the agent. 

I did not properly catch what he said at first, for 
I was attending to my neighbors ; but no report was 
heard ; perhaps the man's courage had failed him as 
it had often done before ; and I caught, instead, a 
sound as of one that sinks down overpowered, and 
the slap of a hand upon a forehead. The agent took 
no notice. He had something else to think of. He 
had come to me to blow off his vexation. That 
stateroom of his had become uninhabitable — for a 
man. He had slipped on an overcoat and paced the 
corridor for half an hour in slippers, hoping that his 
neighbors would go to sleep. *' Spanish Grammar?" 
I ventured. Exactly — Spanish Grammar, that, and 
nothing else, but they came to the interjection chapter 
too often. He wished that the wife, ridiculous little 



H Bine Sea* 263 

Lucca image that she was, would have done with 
saying Ave Maria. The worst of it was that for the 
first few days his coughing and banging with his 
elbow against the bulkhead had kept them some- 
what in order ; but now they had got used to it and 
did not care a bit. They went on as if they were in 
a " private room " at the restaurant, munched sweet- 
meats brought away from the table, and sijDped 
rosolio. It seemed as if they w^ere having private 
gymnastics, with their jumping and tearing about. 
Who would think that such demure little wretches 
as they seemed above on deck, could behave so like 
imps. He meant to be revenged the next day; he 
was going to make their lives a burden to them from 
one end of the deck to the other; and at table make 
them as red as two turkey cocks at every mouthful. 
The little hypocrites. And he must do the walking. 
But he had not lost his time. Coming out of his 
room he had seen a white figure disappear at the end 
of the cross corridor, and had recognized the Swiss 
lady. Had not made out at what door she slipped 
in. Could not have been that of the gentleman 
with the eyeglasses, for the Argentines were all 
together in the gaucJio^s room, whence issued a clink- 
ing of tumblers; — nor that of the little Tuscan, since 
he for a couple of evenings had been, at this hour, 
going forward, where he had a beat. Suspected the 
descendant of the Incas, but was not sure. As to 
the professor he was probably on deck looking for 



264 On JSlue Mater* 

falling stars ; for whenever lie was in her way, the lady 
would find the stateroom very close indeed for two 
persons, and then up he went to study the heavens. 

In short it was a busy night ; no one was asleep, 
and there would be plenty of material for gossip in 
the morning. He had already seen the mother of 
the piano player putting her head out of her room 
door, and peering up and down with a viperous curi- 
osity. Ah ! apropos ; be had his eye on the daugh- 
ter, whose face lighted up when somebody passed 
by ; but who that somebody was he could not make 
out, because just when he had seen that lighting 
up several people had passed by, and the foxy 
creature was so quick to veil her regard that he 
could not catch the direction. Yes, a fruitless little 
passion, a suppressed fire ; she was tied fast ; it would 
all end in a letter, and a snip of her scissors. But 
there really was something going on, and he meant 
to find out more about it. Oh, yes ! Had I not 
heard ? The Neapolitan priest had been sent for in 
a great hui'ry. He had rushed out like a great 
dromedary, putting on his cassock as he went. Some 
one must be ill among the emigrants. " Basta," he 
said, in conclusion, "I 'm going up to the pantry to 
have a glass of beer and then I '11 come down and 
see if they Ve got quiet. May they die without 
benefit of clergy (accidenti) ! Good-night." 

It was a dreadful night. Twelve o'clock, and 
almost everyone awake. The sultriness oppressed 



H Blue Sea* 265 

us all. And because that was not enough, the 
cabin seemed turned into a great whispering gal- 
lery in which every sigh sounded loud and was 
heard from one end of the corridor to the other. 
In the stateroom behind mine the mill -owner 
was snoring away, every now and then groan- 
ing aloud and exclaiming: ^^ All ! povra Italia!'''' 
which seemed to be the dirge of his hope. From 
time to time I heard the feeble cough of the 
young lady from Mestre, whose room was on the 
other side of the ship. The youngest child of the 
Brazilian lady, a little ailing, would cry and then the 
doleful lullaby of the black nurse would be heard — 
a kind of hoopoe sob which made me think of the 
lamentable wailings of African slaves shut up in the 
hold of sailing vessels becalmed under the Equator. 
Opposite me, on the other side of the corridor, the 
advocate and the tenoi' were chatting without the 
least consideration, and I made out that they were 
talking of Greece. "George Byron!" I heard 
someone say, and then the advocate cried out, 
" So you do not believe in the power of panslav- 
ism?" "Oh!" said the other, "don't talk to me 
of panslavism. For your guidance, you need never 
men-ti-on pan-slav-ism to me." I caught fragments 
of conversation between the Neapolitan priest and 
the Chilian, each at the door of his own room : 
Cuando se produce iin inovimiento de haja en el jprecio 
del oro sellado, . . . 



266 ©n Blue Maten 

At last they were all quiet. But if one do not go 
to sleep at once in these sultry nights in those close 
staterooms it is useless to hope for anything better 
than a dreadful kind of doze, in which sight and 
hearing are dulled but not dead, and dreams, if they 
can be called dreams, take us in dizzy sweep from 
where we are to our house at home, and from our 
house far out to sea again, with a vividness and a 
rudeness of disenchantment which is a real torture. 
And how often, years after, when we are at home 
again, we have these same dreams, as if they were 
glimpses of another world stamped indelibly upon 
our brains like real events, distinct from thousands 
of others in this life. And there comes back to me the 
noise of the water against the ship's side, a few in- 
ches from my ear; and which, in the unusual silence 
of the ship, sounded clearer than ever ; a long, steady 
murmur, which broke sometimes into words, into 
suppressed laughings, into low hissing, and then died 
away into the faintest rustling; when, whack, there 
came a furious blow, and then once more a voice, as of 
prayer, as if the monster were entreating entrance, 
swearing that he would do nobody any harm, promis- 
ing to be good. Ah, the hypocrite ! And still, without 
rest, he scrapes and strokes and rubs and rasps and 
licks and flaps and taps and searches for a hole, 
and fumes and frets to find all tight and sound, and 
bemoans himself, and wonders that he is not trusted ; 
and then, losing patience, he begins once more to 



H Blue Sea^ 267 

rage and threaten and beat at the door like an angry 
master of the house. 

And with this ceaseless babble there ai'e mingled 
all sorts of suspicious sounds, the door-knob, the 
water-jug, the swinging lamp, and every now and 
then you would swear there is somebody in the room 
rummaging your trunks. You rouse yourself and 
find that there is indeed some one coming in. It is 
the watchman who is making his I'ounds to see if 
the air-ports are closed. He gives a look and goes 
out again. And then you hear other sounds on deck ; 
hasty steps, as of people running at an alarm, un- 
intelligible noises which, in the silence of night, 
seem tremendous, and make you think some accident 
has happened. Passengers get up, look out, go on 
deck, and then come down again. It is nothing at 
all. A couple of sailors hauling a rope. You shut 
your eyes and begin to doze once more, and wake 
up with a start at a stunning, terrible din. What 
has happened, — a boiler burst ? Quarter smashed 
in ? No, a rain squall. Ah ! at last, then, we can 
sleep ! But through the port a pale, ashy streak is 
seen. The day glimpse glimmers. Maledizione ! 
— Five days more ! 



CHAPTEE XV 



DEATH ON BOARD 



( >^s^^^H>^^>M»>W?^\W ^ 




C!^^>ih^^^^v^^>^\:>^^>^^-v^.^^^-a^ 



IVE days more ! This was the 
exclamation of everyone that 
morning ; and the five days that 
yet remained seemed longer than 
the eighteen that had passed. 
For it must be remembered that, 
in virtue of some psychic law or other, the slow 
growth of tedium and general weariness had been 
going on unperceived even in the intervals of fine 
weather and of good hnmor. When these were at 
an end, the pressure of the hateful burden, far from 
being alleviated, was felt once more just as if it had 
constantly been bearing on us, and all the heavier 
for the time that had elapsed. That eighteenth day, 
too, gave promise of ill. Clouds, gray and black, 
made a low, hanging vault over the ocean, which 
had in some places the color of well-shaken oil, in 
others looked like moistened ashes, or now and then 
like a sea of blackish bitumen which rose and sank 

268 



Deatb on Boarb. 269 

like the pitch in the tank of the bairators.^ Forward 
and aft, groups were formed and news was circu- 
Liting. The okl Piedmontese peasant had died dur- 
ing the night, of pleurisy. The death certificate had 
been drawn up and signed by two witnesses that 
morning, at dawn, in the chart-room, after due verifi- 
cation by the doctor. This event, though well known 
to be not infrequent on that long voyage and among 
so many people, was, nevertheless, a source of dis- 
quietude, as if everyone were threatened. The doc- 
tor was detained on the piazzetta by the ladies who 
wished to hear about it ; and, with that placid face 
of his, like a mild Nicotera, he told the story. It was 
a piteous scene. The old man had wished to see 
the young lady from Mestre before he died, in order 
to give her his papers and the little money he had, 
to be sent to his son. But his last moments were 
an agony of despair. No efforts of the priest could 
induce him to be resigned to death. In the looks 
he cast upon those near him, and on that strange 
hospital where he was lying, there was an immeas- 
urable anguish, the terror of a child at having to 
die there in mid-ocean where there could be no burial 
for him. He clutched with both hands the arm of 
the young lady, saying at the last only. Oh mefie^d! 
Oh me pover fieul ! " O my son ! O my poor son ! " 
and rolled his head from side to side in utter desola- 
tion. His face after death remained bathed in tears 

' Dante, Inf., xxii. 



270 ®n :telue Mater* 

and distorted with terror. The young lady had 
ahnost to be carried on deck, and could hardly drag 
herself back to her room. 

I went forward. Here there was the little com- 
motion that may be seen in the square, of a morning 
when some crime has been committed overnight; a 
gathering and a low, eager whispering of women, 
who showed under the mask of sadness a certain 
satisfaction at having something unusual to discuss, 
a satisfaction that is always greater when it is news 
of death. They talked about the funeral and when 
it was to be, how performed, on which side he was 
to be thrown over, and whether feet foremost or no. 
And there were the most extraordinary conjectures. 
He was to be thrown overboard naked, with a can- 
non-ball at his neck ; they were to leave him float- 
ing in a chest, tarred as the law prescribed to pro- 
tect him from the fishes. Some said there were 
sharks already about the ship, attracted by the smell 
of the body ; and some looked to see if it were so. 
There were crowds at the door of the sick bay, wish- 
ing to go down and see the corpse, but a sailor was 
posted there to prevent them. Meanwhile, on the 
forecastle, the old man in the green jacket, with his 
usual circle of hearers, harangued and cursed, with 
his finger in the air. " One less ! We are getting 
on. The flesh of the poor flung to the fishes ! They 
meant from the first that this one should die. It 's 
my belief they did not give him anything to eato" 



Beatb on Boat^♦ 271 

He declared, moreover, that instead of good soup they 
sent the man dish-water ; and that they had let him 
die without a pillow under his head. Moreover, cer- 
tain telltales whispered that evening how he had in- 
sinuated a suspicion that this was not the first death 
that had happened this voyage ; but that the others 
had been kept quiet, and the bodies thrown over- 
board at dead of night from the poop-deck. " But 
the day of reckoning will come," he loudly declared, 
and he with his hearers flashed such glances at me 
that I desisted from trying to hear more just then, 
and went to get news of little Galileo. 

I found the father at the door of the stateroom in 
the second cabin, seated on a box, with one of the 
twins between his knees, and a pipe in his mouth. 
" The lad is quite well," he said, with a smiling face ; 
and then, with a wink towards the forecastle, whence 
voices were to be heard, he said in an undertone : 
Ghe xe dele teste calde — ^' There are some hotheads 
there." And he went on in his northern dialect : 
" For my part, when once I am in the new world, 
why should I trouble my head because things go 
badly in the old ? " This question was a feeler. He 
wished to know whether I were a wrong-headed 
signore, or such a one as could be reasoned with. 
Bat without any other answer from me than a nod 
of the head, he went on eagerly and frankly, as if 
my look had inspired confidence : 

Per conto mio de mi. " You gentlemen, saving your 



272 On JSlue Mater* 

presence, are wrong to spread such idle reports about 
America, and how they die of hunger there, and how 
they come back more miserable than ever, and how 
there is the plague there, and how the government 
is a set of traitoi's and despots (e cussi via) and so 
forth. What is the next thing ? The next thing is 
that when a letter comes from someone over there, 
how they are getting on and making (bessi) money, 
why nobody believes any more what the sidri say, 
even when it is true ; they suspect that it is all a 
trick, that the contrary is true, and i parte a mile a 
la volta — they go out by thousands." 

I told him he was quite right, and that if nothing 
but the truth wei'e spoken it is probable that fewer 
would, have gone over. '' And you have pretty 
good prospects, I suppose ? " 

" Mi ? " he answered. ^' This is the way I look at 
it. I can't find anything worse than I leave. The 
worst that can happen is to starve, as I did at home. 
DigJiio hen f " 

Then, refilling his pipe : I ga un hel dir : No emi- 
gre^ no einigre. " It 's no use their saying. Don't emi- 
grate, don't emigrate." The Cavaliere Careti made 
me laugh. [Who should this Cavaliere Careti be ?] 
^ You 're wrong,' he said, 'you 're wrong.' He told 
me that every emigrant who went over took four hun- 
dred francs capital with him. ' You are going, ' he 
said, ' to produce and to consume out of your country. 
You do it wrong.' Cossa glie par a W de sta maniera 




**1It's no use tbcir sa^sing, 2)on't emf^iate, 5»on't emiaratc' 



274 ®n :)Blue Matet^ 

di razonar^ la me diga. — I only ask you what you 
think of an argument like that. He said, too, I was 
wrong to complain of the taxes, for the higher they 
were the more the contadino worked and the more 
he produced. Piavolce, la me scusa, digo mi. All 
nonsense, saving your reverence, say I. I do not 
know anything about these things. I only know 
that I work the flesh off my bones and do not 
get enough food for my wife and myself. I emigrate 
to get something to eat. You advise me to wait un- 
til you have reclaimed Sardinia and the Maremma, 
put the Roman ten'itory under cultivation, aild 
opened co-operative banks and bakers' shops, and 
then the government will go right on to help agH- 
culture. But what if I have nothing to eat the 
while ? — Oh crose de din e de dia ! How can a man 
wait if he is starving ? " 

Encouraged by my approval, he branched out a 
little, and began setting forth those general ideas 
with which everyone of his class has his head more 
or less confusedly filled as to why things go so badly ; 
everything spent to keep soldiers ; heaps of millions 
for guns and ships ; and then zo tasse, the taxes, 
the poor not considered at all ; the usual thing, but 
then it never sounds so true or so sad as when we 
hear it from one who has experience in his own 
trouble of its effects, and to whom we can offer no 
consolation, not even words. And while he told me 
how, after a day of toil, he found on the table noth- 



2)eatb on Boarb^ 275 

ing but onion broth, and was kept awake at night 
by hunger, and did not " venture " to eat lest he 
should take the bread out of the mouths of his chil- 
dren, who had not enough as it was, I reflected how 
little, had his case been my own, I should have cared 
for histoi'ical necessity and the sacrifice of the pres- 
ent for the future, and for national dignity and all 
the rest of it. Society, which demanded such sacri- 
fices of him, had not even taught him to understand 
them ; and it would have been insulting his misery 
to try and explain. And I listened to him with that 
feeling of shame which is justly ours when we ai'e 
told of the troubles of the poor ; for does not our 
own conscience tell us that this gi'eat injustice, 
though we cannot, even in imagination, devise a 
remedy for it, is nevertheless an inherited respon- 
sibility. 

" O, no," he said, shaking his head. Come die 
xe el mondo adesso, la xe una roha die no pol durar — 
La ghe va massa mal a tropa zente. — " Things can- 
not go on so. It is too hard upon too many people." 
And then he told me of misery that he saw around 
him ; pitiful stories which he heard in the steerage, 
— so pitiful that his case seemed fortunate by com- 
parison. There were some who for years had not 
eaten meat ; who for years had not worn a shirt ex- 
cept on festa days ; who never slept in a bed ; and 
who yet toiled grimly all the while. There were 
some who when their passage was paid would reach 



276 Qn Blue Mater* 

America with a couple of scudi ; and who every day 
put by a bit of biscuit in a bag that they might, on 
lauding, if they did not soon find work, have a 
morsel to eat without begging for it. He knew, he 
said, not one but many who, that they might not be 
barefoot when they reached America, kept their one 
pair of broken shoes tied round their feet with 
strings, and slept with them under their pillow at 
night, lest they should be stolen. J^ la senta^ he 
added, glie xe de quelli die i gli' ha fato tanto cativa 
vita^ die i xe partii trojpo tardi^ e i va in America a 
farse soterar — "There, are some who have led such 
evil lives that it is too late, and they are going to 
America only to be buried." Then he pointed out 
to me a peasant of about forty years old, a short dis- 
tance off, bareheaded, dripping with sweat, and 
holding his head in his wasted, trembling hands. 
He had a bad fever which never left him, caught in 
the rice fields, and he could keep nothing on his 
stomach. One night (but no one must know) he 
himself had seized the poor fellow when he was 
nearly overboard. He had tried to throw himself 
into the sea, and since then his wife never let him 
out of her sight. Poor woman. She was more to 
be pitied than he. La varda ela, die rohete ! Just 
think of that ! 

All this he said sadly, but without bitterness ; 
not at all to propitiate me, but simply from that 
vague notion, partly religious, partly intuitive, but 



Deatb on Boarb* 277 

common amongst his class, that the wretchedness of 
the masses is the way of the world, like pain and 
death ; that it is a condition necessary to the exist- 
ence of the hnman race, and that no social adjust- 
ment can chano:e it. 

'' Ah, well," he concluded, " God be good to ns ! 
If I could only find in America such hrava zente 
as I have found on board here ! For hark ye, sior 
paron, if that poor sick lass (^putelct) do not go to 
heaven it is because they do not let anybody in any 
more. Why, she sends broth to the nursing mothers, 
and money (hessi) to the poor people, and linen to 
those that have not any. She is a blessing to us all. 
Ma GO ' glie digo mi die el viondo va mat. Tin ctnzolo 
compagno^ die tocara inorir zovene. Did I not say 
that there was something w^rong in the world ? An 
angel like that to die so young ! I 'm coming, chat- 
terbox," he cried turning to the stateroom. ^' Con 
parmeso^ par on. My wife is calling me. La se 
varda, die a Tnomenti se verze le catarate ! Look 
out, we shall have a torrent of rain in a moment ! " 

And, sure enough, there came, all on a sudden, 
from the gray sky, a shower of huge drops as large 
as grapes, and then a roaring downpour of thickest 
rain, veiling everything as if the ship had sailed 
into a cloud. A crowd of passengers surged noisily 
into the covered way where I stood, and, driving 
me forward a dozen paces, surrounded and im- 
prisoned me, darkling, and in the midst of wet 



2 78 ®n Blue Matet. 

jackets and a strong smell of poverty. And then 
occurred a memorable scene. It was not ten minutes 
before a movement of the crowd and an outbreak of 
booting and laughing bespoke a quaiTel ; and, rising 
on tiptoe, I saw a hand in air falling with rapid and 
regular movement on the bowed neck of some in- 
visi1:)le form, like a sledge hammer on an anvil. 
'' Who is it ? What is it ? " Everybody was clamor- 
ing ; nothing could be made out. A couple of sailors 
ran up, the commissary followed, the combatants 
were separated and led away amidst the shouts of 
the bystanders. Supposing, of course, that they 
would be taken to the "hall of judgment," I ran 
there, too, and making a short cut through the third 
class reached the place just as the culprits did, and 
was amazed to see in these the father of the Genoese 
girl, panting with rage, and that poor little Modenese 
bookkeeper, hatless, exhausted, with a countenance 
tkat was a plainly written receipt for a merciless 
thrashing. A concoui'se of grinning faces followed 
them. The accused entered the commissary's room ; 
the crowd surged outside the door. 

It was thus. When the rain squall came the 
bookkeeper had run with the others into the covered 
way and had been packed in there by the crowd 
like a pilchard in a cask. It was his hap, good and 
evil at once, to find himself close behind the Genoese 
girl, his face against her hair, and just behind him, 
alas, unseen, another, the father-in-law of his dear- 



S)eatb on Boarb. 279 

est dreams. The poor young fellow, dead in love 
these eighteen days, and tempted by the dark- 
ness, had lost the guiding lamp of reason, and had 
begun to imprint kiss after kiss upon the neck and 
shoulders of his idol, with such vehemence, such a 
frenzy of passion, that he did not even feel the first 
paternal man-handling that he received. At the 
second he had come to himself, as from delirium, and 
could hardly believe his head was on. 

The trial was too funny for human endurance. 

The father, beside himself with rage, was cui'sing 
and abusing him : ^' Mascarson ! Faccia de galea ! 
Porco d'^un ase ! Ti veuggio roiiipe o muro ! Raga- 
muffin, jail-bird, and so forth ! I '11 break your head 
against the wall ! " And out went the threatening 
hand again to seize him by the hair. 

The other was pitiful to see. He denied nothing ; 
said he had lost control of himself, beo^o^ed for foi'- 
giveness, declared he w^as honest, tried to show a 
letter from the syndic of his village (Chiozzola, I 
think) and, taking his head in his hands, wept like 
a beaver (sic) and made gestures of despair like 
Massinelli in the holidays. " But I forgot myself I 
tell you. I acted like a brute. I give you my hon- 
or. . . . I did not mean. . . . Kill me if 
you like." And under all his grief and shame shone 
out the not ignoble passion which had driven him 
to such extravagance ; one of those violent emo- 
tions which do sometimes blaze up in such poor 



28o Qn Blue Mater* 

little creatures, like an explosion of gas in a lamp 
chimney. 

But the father would not be pacified. He was 
thoroughly angry. His paternal pi'ide was oifended 
at such an audacious act having been committed by 
so wretched a creature, by a poor little half-alive 
skeleton (quel mezz' uomo die reggeva V anima coi 
denti) that after all abased itself so utterly. He kept 
on yelling and screaming, Bruttb ! Strason die no sei 
atro! A mae fggia ! E glie veu da faccia ! — and 
tried to get at him again, whei'eon the other stretched 
out his arms disconsolate, as who should sav, ^^ Here 
I am, do what you like with me." And then he de- 
clared once more that he was an honest man and 
again presented the letter of his syndic. 

The commissary was greatly puzzled what to 
do. I saw in his eyes a smile which meant that, 
struck by the theatrical notion of a wedding on the 
spot, he was half inclined to pi'opose it. But the 
father did not seem a man to be trifled with, so at 
last he got out of it by giving the young fellow a 
long lecture upon the respect due to women, and 
ordering him not to be seen on deck for a while. 
Then he soothed the other, saying that the " occur- 
rence" in no way prejudiced the reputation of his 
daughter, who was greatly respected by everybody — 
and so on. Then he put them both out, desii'ing 
the father to go forward first. He did so, turning, 
however, to shake his fist and send back a few suit- 



Beatb on Boarb, 



281 



able Genoese adjectives, assorted. The young fel- 
low, left alone with the commissary, placed a hand 
on his bosom and said in a dramatic tone, '^ Believe 
me, Signor Commissary, on the word of a man of 

honor, it was my misfortune — a moment of " But 

here his heart swelled, his voice was choked, and, 
raising his eyes to heaven with an expression comi- 
cal, but most sincere, which told the whole story of 
his sea-sorrow, he exclaimed, '' If you but knew ! " 
He could say no more ; and so departed with his 
' head hanging down and the arrow in his side. 

The figure of that poor lovesick young fellow as 
he passed through the covered way is connected in 
my memory with the heavens in their new aspect 
after the clearing showei'. Huge rifts of bluest sky 
fresh washed, swept over by flying clouds. The 
sea great tracts of green with long streaks of purest 
azure, looking like a mighty meadow with endless 
intersecting canals full of water to the brim. We 
seemed to have reached a I'egion, half land half water, 
abandoned by its inhabitants by reason of an inun- 
dation ; and the eye sought on the far horizon towers 
and steeples as on the great plains of Holland ; and 
when the waters were a little ruffled, giving the 
green expanse a look as of larger vegetation, the 
illusion changed and I thought of that vast ocean 
tract covered with a carpet of seaweed which for 
twenty days entangled the ships and frightened the 
sailors of Columbus. Some white birds swept across 



252 



On Blue Maten 



the distant sky, the sun seemed reflected here and 
there from islands of sparkling emeralds, and in the 
air was balmy spring, the fi'agrance of the shore, 
speaking to the soul like an echo of far-off voices 
wafted to us upon the breeze of the pampas. 

But the emerald sea and the little episode of the 
unhappy lover lightened for a few moments only the 
gloom of that day on board the Galileo. The blonde 
lady alone carolled for joy as she paced the deck on 
her husband's arm, caressing him with voice and eye 
and face, like a seven-days bride, perhaps to make 
up for some grievous treachery she had in store for 
him, and of which there was a premonitory twinkle 
in the blue pupils of her childlike eyes ; while he, 
as usual, drooped his shoulders, made with the 
tongue's tip and half-shut eyes the light smile that 
seemed to mock himself, and her, and the rest of us, 
and all the universe, — a sneer symbolic of his cool 
philosophy. On all the rest, the idea of the dead 
body we had on board and which was to be cast into 
the sea that night threw a shade of sadness ; and 
eyes glanced forward from time to time as if in fear 
that the man would rise up and come out again to 
curse his hideous burial-place. The talk was all of 
him. It grew gloomier and gloomier, as if with 
coming darkness that body would grow longer, and 
at dead of night reach aft and I'attle with its feet at 
the stateroom doors. The dinner was dull enough. 
There was some grim discussion between the old 



Beatb on Boarb^ 283 

Chilian and the captain as to whether a body cast 
overboard with weight fastened to its heels would 
reach the bottom whole, or whether the tissues 
would be torn and stripped off by the tremendous 
pressure and only the skeleton get so far. The 
captain favored the latter idea. The Chilian, on 
the contrary, maintained that the pressure of the 
water from without was neutralized by that from 
within and was the same in every direction, so that 
the body would sink unharmed. And then, agreeing 
about the initial velocity of the descent, its regular 
acceleration and the exti'eme depth of the Atlantic, 
they settled it that the bod^ would occupy about 
one hour in its vertical descent. " Wait a moment," 
said the Chilian, ^' the body might come across cur- 
rents which would send it up again." 

At this notion of the body coming once more to 
the surface I saw my neighbor, the advocate, shud- 
der ; yet he stood his ground like a man. But the 
Genoese was ill-advised enough to speak of a de- 
scription he had read in a New York newspaper of a 
diver who went down into the hull of a w^recked 
steamer and found the drowned corpses hideously 
swollen, upright in the water, their eyes out of their 
sockets and their lips hanging down ; so horrible to 
see by the light of his lamp that his blood froze in 
his veins and he fled like a madman. The advocate 
could bear it no longer ; he sprang up, dashed his 
fork into his plate and crying out, " Gentlemen, be- 



284 On :Blue Mater* 

think yourselves ! " made for the door. The captain, 
annoyed by this scene, spoke no more; and the din- 
ner came to an end in silence. As we rose from the 
table the Genoese came with joyous visage and 
whispered in my ear, '^ At midnight ! " 

The burial had indeed been secretly fixed for 
midnight in order to prevent a throng of steerage 
passengers ; and the commissary, morever, had put 
it about among them that the ceremony would take 
place at four in the morning. 

At midnight it was overcast again and there was 
a long narrow streak on the western horizon as if the 
huge dark cowl of the sky had not yet fully settled 
down upon the earth to make black night. The sea 
was of an inky hue, the air lifeless. But for a lantern 
or two on deck we should have had to grope our 
way as if we had been in the hold. 

Moving towards the forward part of the ship, I 
heard in the darkness tlie voice of the Marsigliese 
holding forth in eager accents upon the poetry of 
being buried in the ocean and of being laid to sleep in 
that enormous solitude : — J''aimerais ga^ moi ! said 
he. Some passengers came out of the third class, all 
silent and glancing about them. In the covered way, 
I overtook the Neapolitan priest in cope and stole, 
walking with long, slow" steps, and preceded by a 
sailor who bore the holy water in a dish. 

When I reached the bow, I found a group assem- 
bled near the women's cabin. A lantern held by 



Deatb on 3Boart)» 



285 



the humpbacked sailor lightened them from below. 
There was the captain and the commissary and 
several first-class pase 



engers ; farther on 
some sailors; a dozen 
or twenty emigrants 
were crouched down 
along the canteen, and 
one or two figures 
were dimly seen upon 
the forecastle. When 
the priest arrived, all 
moved so as to stand 
in semicircle, and on 
one side appeared the 
waxen face of the friar. 
At the same moment 
I heard a rustle near 
me and saw the young 
lady from Mestre with 
her aunt in the half- 
light under the bridge. 
Supposing that 
they would, as usual, 
launch the body from 
the forecastle I was at 
a loss to imagine why they all stopped there ; but 
at a sign from the captain, two sailors opened the 
entering port in the bulwark, and I understood. 




'©n one si6e appeared tbe wayen 
face of tbe fiiar." 



286 ©n JBlue Mater. 

Meanwhile it seemed that the ship was moving 
more slowly, and in a few moments, to my surprise, 
she stopped altogether. 1 was not aware that the 
ship must not be in motion when the body is thrown 
over, lest it should be sucked under the screw. 

Then all were silent, and I marked the red, sleepy 
face of the captain, somewhat annoyed, it seemed, at 
having to get up and take pai't in this ceremony. 
He kept his eyes fixed upon a long plank at his feet 
right in front of the entering port. 

A voice was heard. All turned and saw three 
sailors come out of the steerage carrying a shapeless 
mass like a heap of bedclothes. 

All made way, and they came forward as if to 
place their burden crosswise upon the plank. 

The captain said in undertone, jP(?r drito! hruttoi^ 
" Longwise, you lubbers ! " 

They made the change, and softly arranged the 
bod}^ with the feet towards the sea. The huge holts 
of iron, fastened to the heels, made a stern Jar upon 
the deck. 

The body was wrapped in a white sheet sewed 
like a sack and covering the head, then laid upon the 
mattress, which was doubled round it and bound 
about with a cord. The iron bolts protruded from 
the wrapping. The whole had the piteous look of 
a bundle of stuff tied together anyhow for a hasty 
move. The body seemed so shrunken and shortened 
that I could have believed it a boy. From a rent 



Death on Boarb, 287 

in the sheet, at one end, stuck out a naked toe. The 
hooked nose and the chin seen under the winding 
sheet recalled the eager expression the poor man had 
worn on my first visit to him in his berth when he 
was fumbling for that address of his son. Perhaps 
that son was at the moment asleep in some shanty 
of his railroad and dreaming that he was soon to see 
his poor old father. All kept their eyes upon that 
face as if they expected to see it move. The silence 
and quiet of all around was so profound that we 
seemed the only living beings in the world. 

" Now, your reverence," said the captain. 

The priest, dipping his hand in the dish the sailor 
was holding, sprinkled the body, and said the bene- 
diction. 

All uncovered ; some of the third-class people 
kneeled down. I looked round and saw^ the young 
lady on her knees in the darkness, her hands over 
her face. 

The priest began to I'ecite in a hurried manner : De 
profundis clamavi ad te, Domine; exaudi vocem mfiemn. 

Many responded, " Amen." 

The two lanterns held by the sailors cast a reddish 
light upon still, sad faces, with infinite darkness for 
a backo-round. Amono-st others I saw the Garibal- 
dian, and I was pained to see his face as hard and 
stern as ever ; not the faintest ray of pity, — no more 
than if a sack of ballast were being thrown over- 
board. Could it be possible, I thought, that that 



288 ©n Blue Mater* 

saintly creature yonder had made no impression 
whatever upon him, and was I once more shamefully 
deceived in supposing there was a great soul in that 
man, — but not a heart ! 

The priest mumbled still more rapidly the remain- 
ing verses of the De pwfundis, and the Oremus — 
Absolve. Then he sprinkled the body once more 
with holy water. At the lleqiiiein ceternam all arose. 

" Over," said the captain. 

Two sailors took the plank by the ends, and softly 
raising it placed it on the sill of the entering port, so 
that about a quarter of the length projected over the 
water. As they raised it, I saw something move on 
the bosom of the corpse. It was the black cross 
which the young lady had been wearing. 

The lanterns were held up. 

The two sailors slowly raised the plank at the 
head, until the body began to slip downwards. 

Then I heard within me those despairing words of 
the poor dying wretch, as if someone had cried out 
with an exceeding great cry that reached the shores 
of ocean : Oh me fieid! Oh me pover fieul ! 

The body slid off the plank and disappeared in 
the darkness with a hollow plunge. The sailors 
closed the port and dispersed like shadows. Before 
we reached the quarter-deck the ship was once more 
in motion, and we were already far away from the 
poor old man, as he pursued his solitary journey 
down through the gulfs of night. 







i::i^ 



CHAPTER XVI. 



DEVIL DAY. 




F it be true that in the course of 
every long voyage there is a so- 
called "Devil Day," in which 
everything goes wi'ong and " the 
ship is made a hell of," I think 
the Galileo had her Devil Day 
on the morrow after the burial ; at all events, three- 
quarters of it, foi", by the blessing of Providence, it 
did not end as it began. Thei'e were reasons for 
trouble in the death which had taken place on board, 
the knowledge that for two days we had not been 
making good time, and the constant sight of a sea, 
ugly and vast, like a huge sheet of platinum, which 
reflected a vault of colored clouds and on which 
sheets of fire seemed to rain down, as on the blas- 
phemers in Dante's Inferno. But even this was 
hardly enough to account for such a day as ours 
was ; and I fear I must admit some kind of mysteri- 



19 



2S9 



290 On Mine Mater* 

oils influence exerted by the Tropic of Capricorn, 
whicli we were to pass within twenty-four hours. 

No sooner was I awake than I became aware that 
the moral atmosphere was charged with electricity. 
The Genoese stewardess had broken out in such a 
passion of jealous fury that she screamed and railed 
upon the false Ruy Bias in the open corridor, calling 
him a hundred times by a name that was not nice at 
all, with no more consideration than if she had been 
in a back slum 'of Turin. The agent threatened to 
send for the captain on the spot ; and so succeeded, 
with some trouble, in stop2:)ing the flow of her abuse. 
I went out and found the captain himself given over 
to the furies ; brandishing a document, questioning 
the commissary, and threatening to go in person a 
piggiali a jpe in to cu the whole foi'ty-seven of them. 
A letter, it seems, had been handed him a short time 
before, signed, after a fashion, by forty-seven steerage 
passengers, complaining of the food and demanding 
very particularly a ^' greater variety in the dressing 
of the meat-dishes," which was always the same, 
" and which," the paper writing went on to set forth, 
" should be discontinued " (sic). The protest was got 
up by that old Tuscan in the green jacket, and writ- 
ten out on a sheet of paper which beti*ayed an in- 
stinctive hoiTor of the wash-hand basin on the part 
of all the signers. The captain was inconceivably 
exasperated by this nastiness ; and, suspecting it to 
have been done on purpose, declared he would give 



Devil Dap. 291 

them a lesson tbey would remember. Meanwhile 
he ordered an inquiry. The commissary reported, 
moreover, that during the night some passenger 
had, out of pure spite, snipped with scissors the 
black silk dress of that poor lady already spoken 
of; and that this time the unhappy creature could 
bear it no longer, but had run to demand justice, 
sobbing, choked with grief and rage. How to find 
out the guilty party was the problem. Nor was 
this all. Some persons, not choosing to put their 
mouths to the fresh-water spigot, as the custom was, 
had smashed all the spigots of the tanks so as to 
force the men to give them their drink in cans. 
But the culprits were in a fair way of being dis- 
covered ; and the question was how to punish them. 
A bad beginning. 

I went on deck, and found there almost all the 
passengers looking like people who had passed a 
night of utter misery {nui pettini di lino)^ and it was 
easy to see that reciprocal aversion had risen to a 
point where it was ready to pass the line which 
separates contemptuous silence from open abuse. 
They did not say " Good -morning," and they 
brushed against one another without any ajDology. 
The beast-tamer herself, she who had lived so many 
days in a kind of effervescence of maternal love for 
everybody, kept aloof as if all the Charti'euse of her 
secret repository were dead within her. The Genoese 

' " On tenter-hooks" is the parallel expression. 



292 ©n Blue Mater. 

met me with a sour visage, and, fastening his single 
eye upon me, said : " Sir, do you know what the 
news is this morning? No ice ! The machine has 
broken down, and the man in charge has smashed 
his hand. This is the second time ! It is outrao;e- 
ous !" He was dreadfully put out, that is tlie fact. 
He was moving off, but turned round and, eying 
me askance, said with a sneer, "What do you think 
of that fiy they put upon the table last evening?" 
and so departed. My friend of the next stateroom, 
too, was leaning against the mizzen mast, more woe- 
begone than usual, and with all the signs about him 
of having passed the night on deck so as to get rid 
of his tormentor below. Even the bride and groom, 
sitting side by side on an iron bench, had a stolid 
look, as if, for the first time, that Procrustean bed 
on which they had been learning Spanish for a fort- 
night had been too much for them. Tlie only ones 
who smiled were the Argentine lady, in a charming 
dark green dress, whose color was reflected, as by a 
mirror, in the face of the piano player's mother: and 
the young lady from Mestre, who went round with 
a sweet, melancholy face and a paper in her hand to 
collect some money for the poor fever-stricken peas- 
ant and his wife, so that they should not reach 
America without clothes and shoes. And it was a 
pity and a shame to see what scowling faces were 
turned upon her, and with what scant courtesy the 
greater part of them at last wrote down their names. 



Wcvil Wa^. 293 

But few spoke, and those who did so made it plain 
by their venomous glances that they were speaking 
ill of somebody or something, as we are all apt to do 
when our nerves are upset. Amongst others, I heard 
the mill-owner, who audibly thought it was " rather 
strans^e that in a steamer like oui's a man was per- 
mitted to come up on deck in sli[)pers " ; and he 
glanced at the Neapolitan priest, who certainly was 
shuffling about in a regular pair of barges, and so 
could come up close behind one unperceived — a 
thing which not everybody was disposed to take al- 
together kindly. The impudence of this I'enegade 
grinder of corn disgusted me; I turned my back on 
the whole tedious set of them, and went forward for 
a while. 

But hei'e it was worse still. The closeness and 
the foul air had driven everybody on deck, and I 
never had seen so many people there. It was one 
dense crowd from the kitchen right forward, — all 
uneasy, as if expecting something, all tousled 
and frowsy, as if they had not been to bed for 
several nights. It was easy to perceive that they 
had had more than enough of the sea, the kitchen, 
and the ship rules, and were ready to break out at 
the merest nothing. Nobody played cards ; no one 
sang. Even the light-hearted group of the midship- 
deck was nuite ; the noseless peasant was asleep ; the 
encyclopaedic cook paced up and down alone ; the 
album of the ex-porter was unread; the Venetian 



294 On Bine Mater. 

barber only raised from time to time his moon-bayiog 
howl, as if to express in those doleful strains the 
general sentiment of the company. And the emi- 
grants crowding toward the stern looked at the 
doors of the saloon and at the first-class passengers 
with a fiercer eye than usual, as if they would have 
liked to offer something more than insolence ; — for 
why did we take up so much of the ship, — why 
should we, a hundred or so, occupy nearly as much 
room as tliey, a people? Didn't we eat up all 
those nice dishes that they saw carried across the 
piazzetta twice a day, and of which they got nothing 
but the smell. Did n't we have servants in black to 
do all this running about for us, while they had to 
rinse their pots and pans at the deck trough, and 
wait for their food at the kitchen door like beggars. 
Why should this be ? 

And they were not so much to blame, after all. 
We should have looked with equal — perhaps with 
greater — jealousy upon a superior first class of mil- 
lionaires, gorged with cpail on toast, and tipsy with 
Johannisberger. They were tired to death of this 
long-enforced contact with careless ease ; of feeling 
themselves crammed up with their own wretched- 
ness in that huge pen full of rags and evil smells. 
And as they could not fall foul of us they fell foul 
of each other. As early as eight o'clock the two 
peasants who were jealous about the negress had 
come to blows ; and the captain had sent them both 



Wcvii 2)a^. 295 

to the lock-up under tlie bridge, forcing them to 
stand up face to face Avitli their noses touching ; but as 
they could not keep their hands off one another so, they 
were confined separately. And then the Bolognese, 
offended at a rude remark on tlie part of the ship's 
baker, had given him a slap, one of those with a capi- 
tal S — and was duly had up by the commissary. 
As always happens, moreover, example being conta- 
gious, there had been other difficulties and several 
women had scratched faces and toi'n hair. Then the 
boys began, — fighting and tumbling about the deck 
eight or ten in a pile, while the parents ran to sepa- 
rate them, showered down blows and kicks unheeding 
where they fell, and heaped abuse on one another. 
The general irritation had penetrated the kitchen, 
where, owing to competition in contraband traffic, a 
fiery interchange of choice expressions was going on 
between the cook and his assistants, accompanied 
with a terrific clatter of saucepans. 

For us in the aftei'-cabin thinos went wrono: from 
the first. The breakfast was bad, and it was not im- 
proved by our silence, or by the truly tragical frown 
of the captain, who had on his mind an affair — not 
the one of the forty-seven, but a really serious mat- 
ter. An hour before, the mother of the piano player 
had accosted him with much dignity, brandishing a 
protest in due form against the nocturnal meander- 
ings of the Swiss lady, who, at all sorts of impossible 
hours, passed her stateroom in the lightest possible 



296 On Blue Mater* 

costume, to the great scaDclal of her daughter ; but 
this was better than many other things that she did. 
The whole poop-deck was talking about it, it could 
not go on, something must be done. The captain, 
touched on his weak point, had breathed out flame 
and fury, had promised, on his oath (^in so zumnentd), 
to say a soft Avord in the ear of that old horned-owl 
of a professor ; and even to the lady, if need were, 
and to some others too; — and what did they take 
his ship for, — and people must behave themselves, 
perdy, if he had to put sentries in the corridors ; 
and he ended solemnly with his never-failing speech, 
Porcaie a hordo no ne veugglo. There was to be a 
scene, evidently. All through the breakfast he 
darted Torquemacla glances at the blonde lady, 
while others also looked and whispered ; — but she 
was unconscious, — wholly. Squeezed into a dove- 
colored dress, fresher and more spi'ightly than ever, 
she chirped and warbled in her husband's ear, smil- 
ing on all her friends with those sweet, thoughtless 
eyes, — just like the windows of an empty room, — 
and showing oif in a hundred ways her white teeth, 
her little hands, her rounded arms, her amiable soul. 
After the meal, she began walkir>g the deck once 
more, every now and then disappearing suddenly 
and I'eappearing unexpectedly, unconscious — poor 
creature — of the sword of Damocles that was hang- 
ing over her blonde tresses ; in fact all the more gay 
and lively as the weariness around her grew greater, 



2)ev>il Da^» 297 

and, like an ardent heroine who cheered the belea- 
guered defenders as they fainted at their task, seemed 
with her eyes to say that she did all she could for 
suffering humanity, and it was not her fault that she 
could do no moi'e. 

But about three o'clock she went below and was 
seen no more ; and when this one joyous face was 
gone, gloom settled down upon the deck more blight- 
ingly than ever. 

The advocate helped us along a little by a comical 
adventure that befell him. Overcomino^ his instinc- 
tive repugnance to salt water, he had gone to have 
a bath ; and, stepping into the tub, had let it run 
full of water up to his breast ; but putting out 
his hand to turn the spigot, it did not work, or 
he turned it the wrong way, or broke it, or some- 
thing; at all events he let on the stream harder 
than ever, — a perfect spout of water that flooded 
him in a moment, soaked all his clothes, and inun- 
dated the room. We saw him fly across the piaz- 
zetta, shouting to the stewards to go and shut the 
deluge off before the ship filled and went down. But 
only five or six passengers had strength enough left 
to smile at this gleam of fun. The heat grew greater, 
the foul smells from the steerage waxed pestiferous, 
and the greater part of us dragged our worn-out 
bodies from the deck to the saloon, w^here we sank 
down at the tables, or round about on the sofas. 
Oh, what a tiresome set ! I knew every movement 



298 m Blue Mater^ 

of theirs, every gesture they would make, the tone of 
every yawn, the books which they had for a fort- 
night been pretending to read. It was like the 
hundredth time at a puppet show. It was not weari- 
ness, it was utter prostration of soul. Nothing to 
be seen but long faces, heads leaned upon hands, 
eyes filmy and motionless. The pianist played some 
funeral march or other. The Brazilian respectfully 
begged her to desist, as his wife was in her berth 
suffering horribly with nerves. The girl closed the 
piano with a bang, and went away. The agent said 
the plump lady was sobbing in her berth ; why, he 
did not know. The Tropic of Capricorn, he sup- 
posed. One young lady of the family in mourning 
was weeping. A sharp discussion arose between 
the Marsig^liese and one of the Aro:entines, the latter 
observing, and correctly, that from the Observatory 
of Marseilles only two of the stars of the Centaur 
could be seen, the head and the shoulders ; while the 
other maintained that they were all visible. Toutes 
les sept^ Monsieur, toutes les sept ! -^^^ ^\\t that is 
absurd ! " Mais, Monsieur, vous avez utie fagon. . . . 
The captain, coming in and looking around with a 
ferocious glance for some one, cut this contention 
short, and the silence of the tomb settled down upon 
the cabin. 

I could bear it no longer and w^ent out to go up 
on the bridge. But I had not yet reached the end 
of the covered way when I heard a cry of terror and 



saw a crowd of people rush to the foot of one of the 
deck-ladders. A child that had clambered to the 
topmost step had rolled dowD, striking its head on 
the deck. The mother, supposing it dead, had seized 
it in a frenzy, and, clasping it in her arms, began to 
cry out like a madwoman. Me lo jettano ammare ! 
U pecciriUo mio ! A criatura mia! ''Ah ! my poor 
little darling, they '11 throw it into the sea ! " and 
with frantic gestui'e gnashed her teeth, drove back 
the throng, and defended, as it were, the little body. 
The doctor came and took both mother and infant 
to the sick bay. This accident raised a great cry 
against the ship, which " was full of danger every- 
where," and against the captain for not posting 
guards at the ladders. The old fellow in the green 
jacket began to declaim most furiously, his forefinger 
up and his gray locks bare. But there had been 
trouble just before this. The poor little bookkeeper, 
whose credit was raised among those forward by his 
kissing escapade, which was looked upon by them 
with complacency as " a flout for the princess," had 
been besieged for a couple of days with mocking 
congratulations, as if the thing had really gone much 
farther. He took it seriously, denying everything 
with fury. At last, however, on receiving a congra- 
tulation more brutal than the rest, his blood boiled 
and he began to strike and kick, right and left, 
like a maniac ; but to no purpose, poor creature, for 
four or five got round him and held him while others 



300 Qn Blue Mater^ 

drove bis hat down over his eyes, and the best he 
could do was to escape with a scratched countenance 
into the cabin. 

I looked for the Genoese girl. She w^as in her 
usual place, at woi'k, as calm and fair as ever, but 
with a sparkle of anger in her eye, for she divined 
the foul insolence of the talk around her, and under- 
stood what hatred there was in the looks she saw. 
Her father had been keeping guard over her for two 
days, ready and anxious to break someone's head. 
But everyone's fingers were itching, for that matter. 
Eveiy half-hour there was a crowd around a couple 
of quarrelling passengers. If an officer were by to 
prevent their coming to blows, they defied one 
another in due fo]*m. '' On the forecastle ? " — '' Yes, 
on the forecastle !" — "After dark this eveninsf ?" — 
" Yes, after dark this evening ! " The forecastle was 
the fenced field always chosen by these doughty 
champions. Three or four times, moi'eover, for no 
conceivable reason, first two, then three, then half a 
dozen had fallen by the ears, causing a surge and a 
rush in the whole crowd ; while men and officers ran 
up to quell the tumult. Two drunken fellows, quar- 
relsome in their cups, had flown at one another's 
throats like wild beasts, and, falling over the cogs 
of the donkey engine, had got damaged ribs, both of 
them. This time the captain came up, raging, with 
the evident intention of keeping his hand in by giv- 
ing both some rnascd that they should remember the 



Depil Way>. 301 

longest day they had to live. But he was too late. 
Things had got to such a pass that I half expected 
to see, before evening, all that crowd grapple with 
and get piled on top of one another in a formless 
heap of heads and limbs, like one of Dore's battles, 
and then topple over the bulwarks into the sea. 
But instead of aversion I felt nothing but compas- 
sion for tliese poor people and their trouble, — a kind 
of sad yearning over them ; foi' beneath the truculent 
looks of all these faces I seemed to perceive an 
abandonment, for some dreadful hours, of all hope, 
an utter weariness of life, a secret grief that broke 
out in anger. It was clear that they w^ere suffering, 
and that they had an infinite pity, each for the other, 
and for himself. Those poor old peasants on the 
forecastle, man and wife, were the living image of 
this state of mind, for even then they were sitting 
there, as usual, on the bitts, their arms upon their 
knees, and their heads upon their arms, in utter 
abandonment ; while their poor bare, wrinkled necks 
told of fifty years of unrequited toil. As I looked 
at them, a pregnant woman fainted upon the glazed 
and grated cover of the companion-way, her white 
face falling amidst the outstretched arras of the 
women near her. There was a cry from a hundred 
voices, "She is dead, she is dead!" — and I came 
away. 

Where should I go ! It would not be night for six 
endless hours. I went back to the saloon and beoan 



302 Qn mm Matei% 

turning over the ship's album. But it was full -of 
commonplaces, of nonsense, and of lies. As a last 
resource I went to my stateroom and tried to sleep. 
But the room was smaller, more confined, more chok- 
ing, more detestable than ever I had known it. The 
passengers seemed all to have retired like myself, 
but not a sound was heard, as if those hundred 
rooms contained nothing but cor]3ses. Not a sound 
save the -doleful ditty of the negress, like a solitary 
chant in a street of the city of the dead. And I 
seemed weighed down, not by my own weariness 
only, but by all the tormenting dulness, the bitter 
memories, the bruised affections, and the sad fore- 
bodings crowded together above there on deck, 
among those sixteen hundred children of Italy who 
were going to seek a new mother beyond the sea. It 
was useless to reason with myself, to analyze my 
state of mind, and try to be persuaded that there 
was no good reason why, on that day, I should feel, 
like the rest, a horror of great darkness, while on 
other days, unlike the rest, I found all bright and 
smiling. My sombre thoughts, kept for a few 
moments at bay, came rushing back the instant I 
slackened in my effort to repel them and overflowed 
the inmost recesses of my soul. I do not knowhowlong 
I was a prey to these imaginings, but at last I fell 
asleep, and dreamed a horrible dream. I was in my 
own house, and it was night ; it was a confusion of 
lights and of faces that I did not know; someone 



Wcvil Da^. 303 

with the death-rattle on hira, in some room of which 
I could not find the door ; — then, in a flash, a change 
of scene, a fearful cry of " Save yourselves ! " — and 
all the mad disorder of a foundering ship. 

At this moment there was a great noise and I 
awoke. I don't know whether I had slept three 
hours or ^ve minutes. A ray of light gleamed in 
the stateroom. The noise above increased. There 
were voices of people calling one another by name, 
there was a sound of hurrying feet and of confusion 
as at a sudden cry of danger. I sprang out of my 
stateroom, while from all the others the inmates came 
running, and hastened up on deck, where was already 
a crowd of people. Looking forward, I perceived 
that every living thing from every hole and corner 
of the ship had come out into the light, the ship was 
black from stem to stern with people, and everyone 
rushed to the starboard side, clambering on the bul- 
warks, the cattle pens, the benches, the shrouds, and 
looking out over the sea. I saw nothing ; a rampart 
of backs concealed the horizon. I questioned two 
passers by ; they rushed on and took no notice. Then 
I went lip on the bridge. Ah ! blessed sight ! What 
a lovely thing I saw ! A huge black smoking steamer, 
covered with flags and crowded with people, was 
coming majestically toward us under the clear sky, 
her high bows cleaving the blue sea, her sails swell- 
ing, all festive, all gilded with the sun like some 
wonder-creature that had started out of the bosom 



304 ©u Blue Mater, 

of the ocean. It was the Dante of the same line, 
coming from the Plata River, bound for Italy, and 
full of emigrants returning to their own country. 
It was the first large steamer we had met since com- 
ing out of the Straits, and it was a sister ship. At 
eveiy puff from her huge bestarred funnels she 
grew largei', and the thousand forms that covered 
her stood out more and more distinctly. The two 
throngs of men each crowded forward and looked at 
one another, in silence, — but all trembling. The 
Dante came so close that an unexpected surge made 
us roll violently. When she was at her nearest and 
showing us the whole length of her magnificent side, 
there was a frantic waving of hats and handkerchiefs ; 
and a great shout, long suppressed, broke out at once 
from the two crowds, — a long-drawn cry of good 
wishes and of adieux in strangest accents, different 
from any cry I had ever heard coming from a throng 
of men; an outburst of loud quivering voices in 
which the sorrows of the voyage, the yearning for 
home, the glad expectation of seeing it again, the 
hope of one day beholding it once more, and kindly 
joy at meeting brothers and hearing the voice of 
Italy away out there upon the Atlantic were con- 
fusedly mingled. But only for an instant. In a few 
moments the Dante was but a black spot upon the 
blue, hardly roughened at the edges by the thousand 
heads of her crowding passengers. But that rapid 
vision had changed everything on board the Galileo^ 




M 



3o6 



m Blue Mater^ 



had reawakened hope and courage, had aroused the 
song and the laugh, had brought us all back once 
more to kindly feeling and to life. 

^' Signore ! " I heard a voice say, near me. I turned. 
It was the young lady from Mestre, who touched the 
Garibaldian with her fan. He turned towards her, 
and the girl, with a face illumined by a flash from 
her inner soul, pointed to the vanishing ship, and 
said, in' her sweet voice, "Our country." 












CHAPTER XVII 



11^ EXTREMIS 




HE next morning all met on deck 
with the same cheerful o^reet- 
ing : '' Three days more ! Almost 
run out {^Siamo agli sgoccioli) ! 
Day after to-moiTow ! " Strange 
enough. This unusual kindness 
among the passengers arose in great measure from 
the thought that they were, before long, to get shut 
of one another for good and all. The weather was 
fine, the air soft. The forecastle was like a village 
on a holiday. On the way thither I met the old 
hunchbacked sailor with a pair of shoes in his hand 
and deep thought on his countenance. He stopped 
and said, softly, E dorine. Ve brutto quando cianzan^ 
ma Ve pezo quando vian. — " These women ! It 's 
bad when they cry, but it 's worse when they laugh." 
And he explained me his idea, which was founded 
upon experience. Whenever there was, namely, as 
yesterday, great cheerfulness on board, there almost 

307 



3o8 ®n Blue Maten 

always followed that evening, or night, some dire- 
ful trouble — for him, that is to say, and naturally 
enough. The night before, for example, " there was 
such a time lascih, down there." '' Great doings, 
hey?" I asked him. He rolled up his eyes, then 
said, rather sharply, " Son stuff o de fa o ruffian^^ and 
so moved off as he saw the agent coming. This 
gentleman, also, was veiy thoughtful, tormented by 
two mysteries which he could not penetrate ; one 
already set forth, namely, who it was that that 
dried-up little bit of a piano player Avas sighing 
after, for he caught her leering all the time, and 
never could see at whom, "like making love with 
a spirit, you know " ; the other was that he had not 
marked the slightest sign on anyone's face of the 
"scene" with which the captain had thi'eatened the 
Swiss lady. Comical enough it was to find this 
white-haired old fellow seriously occupied with 
trifles like these, just as a minister of state might be 
with the threads of a conspii'acy. Yet they say that 
the sea enlaro^es the thouo^hts. But then, he went 
on, the captain knew what he was about, was not a 
man to threaten to no purpose in such a matter as 
that. Who could have charmed away the tempest ? 
Oh ! he would rack his brains and find out all about 
it if he had to stand on watch three days and three 
nights, like a tiger huntei'. 

The happy mood of the passengers favored his in- 
vestigations. Shortly after nine nearly all were out 



on deck ; and the groups and their movements are 
stamped on my memory like those seen in the family 
circle just before some domestic crisis. The Argen- 
tines were gathered around the wheel ; the Mar- 
sigliese lounged chatting before the Portefia lady^ 
who listened to him with a line ecjuivocal woman's 
smile of blended mockery and courtesy. The Bra- 
zilian family, in its usual place, rolled its twelve 
slow eyes around as if it sa\v^ all present for the first 
time ; and at the mother's feet the negress Avas curled 
up like a dog. By the mast stood our "thief," our 
" scape-gallows," and the " Director of the Society for 
no-more-bad-smelling-cesspools." They had been 
several days in each other's company without saying 
a word, like so many deaf-mutes. The advocate was 
dozing on a deck chair with a boolc upon his stom- 
ach. The l)londe lady was sitting chirping between 
the tenor and the Peruvian, whose knee was cov- 
ered by her spreading skirt, and on the settee far- 
thest off \vas the young lady from Mestre, paler than 
usual, save for her cheek bones, which were burning. 
She talked with feverish eagerness, but with a smile 
of inexpressible sweetness, to the Garibaldian, who 
sat near, his powerful face bent like a thoughtful 
man listening to music that brings back memories 
but no illusions. The rest were promenading with 
the brisk irregular pace of cheerful creatures. 

The horizon was veiled with a light cloud, and 
there was a kind of heaviness in the air that made 



3IO Qn Blue Mater* 

one feel from time to time the need of drawing a 
long breath. But tlie heat was mild compared with 
that of several days past. The Argentines declared 
they smelled the aires of their own country. We 
were in the latitude of Santa Caterina, on the coast 
of Brazil — there or thereabouts. 

A moment more, and the Genoese came on deck, 
rubj^ing his hands, and remarking as he passed, 
^' The barometer is falling." 

The fact is, he longed even for a hurricane, so only 
he might get rid of the deadly dulness that was 
preying upon his mind. But was he a bird of ill 
omen, after all ? The mercury had fallen all of a 
sudden before this, and the billows had not raged. 
We say of the people, as of the ocean, that when it 
is calm one wonders how it can be otherwise ; when 
we see it in a fury the marvel is how it can ever 
quiet down again. But now the veil of the horizon 
was growing thicker and higher, a huge mass of 
grayish vapor stood ready to obscure the sun ; the 
ruffled sea was of a dull, leaden hue. And yet I 
was so far from exj^ecting bad weather that I amused 
myself with watching the advocate. He sat up very 
straight, and cast around u]3on the great enemy a 
slow glance of increasing disquietude, looking also 
from time to time at the captain's stateroom and the 
bridge beyond. A screaming of birds made me look 
up. Gulls circling around the mast. A bad sign. 
And more impressive than all was to see a weird- 



irn lEjtremtB. 311 

looking cloud appear suddenly upon the horizon, 
thick, black, edged with white from the pale 8un ; 
and, rapidly rising, cast a dark shadow on the al- 
ready boiling ocean. It was almost cold. 

The passengers were already, all of them, aware 
of the change. The readers had closed their books, 
had risen, and were studying the horizon with that 
look which we fix upon the face of a person we do 
not know and who comes, as ^ve surmise, to discuss 
an important matter. A flash of lightning and a far- 
off growl of thundei', followed by a sudden rolling 
of the ship, provoked an exclamation or two — " Now 
then ! What 's this ? It looks squally." The ladies 
glanced at the captain, the advocate had already dis- 
appeared. Others also retired, English fashion. This 
was enough to cause in the rest an extraordinary 
flow of spirits. They swaggered in the face of old 
ocean, like so many gallant admirals, looking the 
while at the ladies out of the corner of an eye. The 
Marsigliese passed from group to group, saying joy- 
ously : " Qa se hroidlle, ca se brouille. Hous allons 
voir un joli spectacle ! " And in fact we were not 
to be kept waiting for the play. The heavy cloud 
was nearly down upon us, others came swiftly on, 
and certain long, thin streaks of vapor swept so 
closely over us as almost to touch the spars. The 
wind was rising, the sea was getting up, the steamer 
was more uneasy than we had ever known her to be 
before. We had to cling to the bulwarks and the 



312 ®n Blue Mater* 

seats. Still there were some who would not believe 
we w^ere to have a storm. '' It 's only a squall," they 
said ; but those who had made the passage before 
shook their heads and looked knowing. 

I perfectly remember that, watching myself more 
carefully than I did the others, I awaited with a cer- 
tain psychological interest and curiosity the moment 
when the feeling which we are all ashamed to con- 
fess should come over me; and I flattered myself 
that I should be able to mark its slow advance. I 
did not know that it was to spi'ing upon me all of a 
sudden ; at that moment, namely, when the instinct 
of self-preservation should be thi-own into the bal- 
ance and the scale of curiosity kick the beam. In 
short, while yet on shore, I had often desired to try 
what a storm at sea was like, and lo ! a happy chance 
for the artist to record. But as I looked at the piaz- 
zetta and saw officers, engineers, sailors, and stewards 
throng around the shouting and gesticulating cap- 
tain and then scatter in every direction to double 
lash the boats, to nail up the pigpens, to batten down 
the hatches, to secure the air-ports; plunging with 
furious haste through the crowds that were rushing 
for shelter from the spray; then, if you must know, 
I looked for the artist within me and found him 
not. In fact he seemed to have been gone about 
a quarter of an hour. 

The lightning flashed faster, the thunder growled 
more loudly, the oxen bellowed. I looked about 



Ifn jEjttemis* 3^3 

me upon faces already pale. But in some curiosity, 
in others dislike to be shut up in their staterooms 
still prevailed. The ladies clung to their husbands' 
arms. The men looked at one another with doul)t- 
ful glance, each gathering pride and courage from 
seeing tlie rest look moi'e pale and wi'etched than he 
supposed himself to be. Suddenly a shower of spray 
on deck, a suppressed JVom de Dieii! and a forced 
laugh. The Marsigliese had lost his hat, and was 
sluiced from head to foot. At the same moment 
four sailors came running up to carry off the benches 
and the chairs. Then the commissary : " Go below, 
all of you ! We are going to batten. Quick, if you 
please ! " Then was heai'd a wail f I'om the bottom 
of a soul, " O my God ! my God ! " It was the 
young bride. Try to imagine the deep echo in every- 
one's nature of that first cry, that irrepressible con- 
fession of the fear of death, that violently unmasks 
a state of mind which everyone has been disguising 
from others and from himself. Then ensued a disor- 
derly and precipitate flight through the sheets of spray 
that dashed across the deck, a confusion of excited 
and discordant voices: Pahlos^ Pahlos ! — Quick, 
if you please ! — Blessed Virgin, our time has come ! — 
My God ! — Accidemjpoli ! ^ — Courage, Nina ! — Good 
God ! 'will you make haste there ! I had but time to 
see the masts sweep in enormous arcs across the sky 

^ Accidempoli, wholly untranslatable. "Damnation!" suggests 
the same idea — the result of dying without absolution. 



314 On Blue Mater. 

and to mark a frightful jostling of people at the 
companion-way of the third-class when I was violently 
hurled into the saloon. A lady stumbled and fell 
across the entrance. I had a glimpse of the com- 
missary on the quarter-deck, wrapped, as it were, in 
a sheet of water, and I heard the fai*-oif neighing 
of a horse. Then we were shut in. A flash of li^rht- 
ning, an instant and terrific roar of thunder ; and, as 
a frightful lurch of the vessel dashed us to the deck 
and against the sides, the last doubt which anyone 
could possibly have entertained was dispelled at 
once. It was a full-grown hurricane. 

The greater part, grasping the firmly fastened din- 
ing-tables and staggering as if half-stunned, made 
for their staterooms. Some threw themselves on the 
sofas. The ladies wept. The noises of the ship 
drowned all voices. It seemed to be nearly night. 
Persons, places, everything, appeared changed ; for at 
such a moment, when all disguise drops off and the 
human animal is left bare, prostrate, wholly swayed 
by furious love of life, the countenance is drawn, 
the voice is strange, and look and gesture reveal 
traits of character before undreamed of. In the half- 
light of the corridors, where all were falling over one 
another as they groped each for his own stateroom, I 
caught sight of faces that were agonized, — distorted 
almost beyond recognition, as of men condemned to 
die. As I turned into ni}^ own lair, the retchings of 
the sea-sick began to be heard, lamentable voices 



called for the stewards, the doors slammed loudly, 
trunks and boxes, breaking away, were hurled against 
the bulkheads. It was the hurly-burly of strange 
cries and dismal sounds one hears on going into a 
madhouse, where life and its ways are all confounded. 
A sudden lurch tossed me into the stateroom like a 
gripsack, a flash of lightning dazzled me ; the door 
swung to. I was in an immense and hideous soli- 
tude as if shut up by my own hand in my own living 
tomb ; and a sudden thought froze my blood : What 
if I should never get out of this place again ? 

Yes ! there is the truth, told honestly. This one 
thought, stern, cold, sharp, immovable, fastened on 
my soul with its hooks of steel ; the idea, a hundred 
times repelled and a hundred times rushing back 
upon me, of the noise the water would make when 
it broke in, of how many seconds it would take to 
reach my door, of the sudden darkness, of the chok- 
ing, of the drowning. . . . And then the beset- 
ting, horrid fear that my suffering might be prolonged. 
Confusedly I tried to recall what I had heard and 
read to confirm me in the hope of a short agony. 
And well do I remember that the idea of having^ 
desired, from mere curiosity, to try what a hurricane 
was like, seemed senseless, incredible, unnatural, 
monstrous. " Fool ! " I thought, " you wished for 
this, did you ? — and now you have it." 

But these phantasmal shapes were all routed, as 
it were, by the vigorous bodily efforts I was forced to 



31 6 ®n Blue Mater* 

make, as, falling on my knees upon tbe floor, I 
clung with might and main to the side of the berth ; 
the only way to prevent my being dashed about as 
the rat is shaken in the trap. My brain, too, was 
stunned by the uproar in the saloon above, where the 
glass of the sideboards was being smashed to pieces 
and piles of plates hurled in fragments to the floor; 
-while the piano, breaking from its fastenings, was 
thundering to and fro among the stanchions of the 
deck. But worse than all this tumult as of a sacked 
and plundered palace, woi'se than human groans or 
the uplifted voice of the raging sea, was the noise of 
our laboring ship, — a dread shrieking, a concert of 
pound, and crack, and crash, as if a house were being 
torn from its foundations; a dire lament as if the 
mighty giant suffered and cried out as thi'ills of ter- 
ror and of anguish sped through the wrenched joints 
of his living body. Vain to try and gather courage 
from statistics, and what not — one wi'eck to a thou- 
sand voyages, or whatever it may have been. Useless 
to recall the firm structure of these ships that could 
set at nought the fury of the sea. That ceaseless 
dirge scattered all statistics to the winds, and laughed 
to scorn all consolation. Meanwhile, the sea rose 
higher, the rain came down in cataracts, the light- 
ning flashed fast and faster, the thunder roared 
almost incessantly, and the ship gave such bounds 
that when my eyes were closed I seemed to be upon 
a gigantic swing with a sweep of half a mile. I lost 



1Fn ]Ejtremi5, 317 

my breath with every rush, and caught it as best I 
might between the wliiles. And thus to be at the 
mercy of a prodigious power which left me free 
neither to move nor think brought on an inexpres- 
sible sense of physical di-ead, as if I were a beast 
bound fast and whirled in mid-air at the end of a 
stupendous well-sweep. And then, to tliink this 
torment might last ten hours, a day, three days, 
confused the soul like trying to grasp the infinite. 

Up to a certain point I ke23t my mind clear enough 
to remember what my thoughts were ; but after two 
or three hours, as I conjecture it, the fury of the 
storm increasing beyond all measure, my brain was 
stunned, and I can tell but little of what was pass- 
ing in my mind. I remember the tremendous tones 
of the sea, more strange and frightful than any ima- 
gination can conceive, a voice as of all human crea- 
tion crowded together, mad and shrieking ; with this 
the yells and howls of all the beasts of earth, the 
crash of toppling cities, the hurrah of countless ar- 
mies, — whole peoples ])ursting into savage, mocking 
laughter ; then the whistling of the gale among the 
rigging, a long, sonorous, most discordant wail, as if 
every rope were a demon's harpstring ; maddened 
screams of terror and despair, as of captives in a 
flaming prison-house ; heart-chilling hisses, as if a 
thousand furious serpents were twining about the 
masts. The ship rolled and pitched and lurched as 
if she would overset ; at every surge that struck her 



3iB ®n Blue Mater. 

she would quiver from deck to keel as if slie had 
run upon a rock, while plank and timber groaned 
and cracked again, and the senses thrilled as at the 
graze of a falling axe or the wind of a ball that cuts 
the hair away. At every plunge it was as if the 
stroke of a vast and monstrous paw had torn a piece 
out of the ship. Thud after thud there came as a 
'hundred tons of water ruined down upon the deck 
like a cataract from on high, and then the rush of a 
hundred streams from side to side, like so many 
hordes of vengeful pirates. What the ship would 
do next I could not tell at all. She was a helpless 
creature, cuif ed and kicked ; she was a ball thrown 
one way and struck another by a resistless Titan's 
hand. The engine had its pauses, as if stricken with 
paralysis ; the shaft would bang and struggle ; the 
screw, hove out of water, would race madly for an 
instant, and then plunge down again with a blow 
that shook the vessel like an earthquake. And, in 
the pauses of the greater uproar, were heard, above, 
the rushing of eager feet, the whirr of the electric 
bell, weird cries and shouts that sounded strange as 
echoes from a snow-filled valley, wails from the 
staterooms, retchings choked, strangled, agonized, as 
if all within were coming up. Then, suddenly there 
came an upward blow so violent that the water jug 
flew out of the rack, and was dashed to pieces against 
the deck above ; whereon began a still more fiendish 
orgie of the unchained elements^ the ship gave leap 



Hn lEjtremls. 319 

after leap, and I was as if hurled from peak to peak 
across a measureless abyss. Every plunge seemed 
as if it would be tlie last. Aerain and ao:ain I said, 
''It is all over!" I could not believe but that the 
deck was split oj^en above my head, the floor burst- 
ing up beneath my feet, the ship's great ribs twisted, 
her knees torn from their fastenings, her keel snapped 
short across, her bolts and nails drawn shrieking out 
her whole frame dismembered. " What, not yet ? 
The next time then — she '11 never stand another ! " 
Then came a chaos of ideas, memories of old times 
and things of yesterday, a giddy whirl of faces and 
of places, all confused and distorted as by a fever of 
the brain, and all aglow with livid light ; a fierce, 
disordered stream of sighs, of weeping and lament, of 
prayers without any words, of caresses, and of re- 
morse, — and all this swept back and forth as by the 
breath of the dreadful wind outside. 

From time to time a stupor, a hdl in the thoughts 
like that produced by chlorofoi'm ; a short relief, and 
then again, more frightful than before, the grim 
reality as if two ti'emendous hands had shaken me 
by the shoulders, and a terrible voice bad shouted 
in my ear : " It 's you ! It 's you, and no one else ! 
Here you are, and you must die ! " Alas ! how vain 
the thought that comes in tranquil moments, that it 
is all one how we pass away ! Oh, to die with a bul- 
let in my heart ! Oh, to die upon my bed with dear 
ones around me, and loving friends to care for me ! 



320 ©n Blue Mater. 

Oh, to be laid in my little bit of earth, and have my 
children come and say above me, " Here he lies " ! 
At times these thoughts w^ould cease, and it seemed 
for a moment as if the fury of the tempest were re- 
laxing, but another surge would come, and a giddy 
whii'l of the screw, as the vessel's stern sprang out 
of water, swept the flattering unction from my soul. 
f remember, too, an invincible horror of looking at 
the sea, a shuddering aversion like that of the victim 
for his assassin, as if in that dread hour I could per- 
ceive a live ferocity, a hatred of man in the sweep 
of the crested billows, and see hideous faces grinning 
horribly at me through the glass of the air port. I 
could not look ; I turned my eyes away at the fii"st 
glimpse of those Cyclopean walls, those black, rolling, 
thundering mountains, as they fell and dashed each 
other into spray ; and as the volleyed lightning 
streaked with lire those threatening heaps of murky 
cloud, it was a light that seemed to be neither night 
nor day — not a gleam of earth but the glare of a 
dream landscape where our own sun is not. All 
sense of time was lost. I could not tell how lono^ 
the storm had lasted, or guess how many hours it 
would endure. It seemed as if it must last for- 
ever, for I could not conceive what there might be 
that should put an end to so tremendous a convul- 
sion. Impossible I thought that the gulfs of night 
below were not stirred up. Impossible to believe 
that certain fathoms down in the great deep there 



1fn ]Ejtremt6» 321 

was tranquil water; that on the dry hind there were 
peaceful people and there was quiet business. A 
lull ; an instant's respite, as I thus reflected, and 
then another roller dashed its surge against her side 
with a shock as of a cannon-ball ; the ship bounded 
like a harpooned whale, her timbers groaned, her 
planks creaked, her bolts and nails shrieked once 
more, and a fresh sense came ovei' me of my hideous 
peril, of death standing in the very doorway. This 
is the last of earth, I thought; and the anguish of a 
year was crowded into a moment. How long, O, 
Lord, how long ? 

It was many hours, seven or eight it may have 
been, when my ever-passing, still-recuri'ing idea that 
the gale was blowing itself out seemed to stay longer 
as it came back ; it changed into a hope that the 
soul hardly dared cherish, but which the senses 
gradually confirmed. The ship still rolled and 
dashed with fury, but that hateful, angry howling in 
the rigging seemed quieted a little, and the beating 
of the sea, if not less fierce, yet certainly less fre- 
quent. It was a good sign that I felt how bruised 
and tired my body was with those acrobatic feats to 
which I had been forced for so many hours. Until 
now I had noticed nothing of the kind. And I had 
a little curiosity as to what was going on around 
me. Through the groaning of the timbers and the 
roaring of the sea I heard the wails of the Brazilian 
baby, and childlike sobs and cries that must have 



322 On Blue Mater* 

come from women. Feeble voices called out here 
and there for the stewards. Bells jingled. Trunks 
and boxes still went raging up and down the cor- 
ridors like so many wild beasts broken loose. But, 
choosing well my time, so as not to break my head 
against the wall, I made a dart and seized the jamb 
.of the doorway to look ont. I saw certain human 
forms with wild hair and clothes in disorder dragging 
themselves about and stao^sfering^ like drunken men. 
Among these was the Marsigliese with all the 
marks in his face of a deadly fright which was pass- 
ing off but would not leave him altogether. And 
in fact a new lurch of the ship from time to time, 
and a fresh cracking of her poor strained ribs, drove 
me back to hold on with both hands to my berth as 
if the fiendish dance were to go on w^ith more fury 
than ever. Between one recrudescence and another, 
I strained my ears to hear whether in the next state- 
room the anguish of a common danger had not slack- 
ened somewhat the high-strung cords of hatred. I 
was amazed to catch sounds as of a reconciliation, 
but soon changed my mind as an evil voice hissed 
out distinctly, " Ah ! you hoped it was all over, did 
you ? " There was no reply. The first note of real 
encouragement was a general laugh from the direc- 
tion of the Argentines. From the door opposite I 
heard the voice of the tenor attempting a shake. 
The sound was cut short by a dull thump that 
seemed uncommonly like a collision between a hu- 



•ffn JEjtremis. 323 

man head and the side of the ship. Then for a 
space I heard no more voices. The groaning of the 
ship and the roar of the sea were still enough to 
stun the senses, and the rolling fit to break four legs, 
not to say two. But it was possible to get out. 
Swinging myself from one support to another, and 
calculating every step, I managed to reach where the 
corridors crossed. What a sight ! The doors of the 
staterooms were slamming to and fro, and one could 
mark an indescribable raffle of trunks and pillows 
and clothes and boots ; heads dangling over basins ; 
bodies lying as if dead; garments in disorder; jugs 
and pitchers rolling about the floor. Still the mo- 
tion was less violent, so I moved on and met the 
Genoese, who with bandaged head was bumping 
along the wall and using exceedingly bad language. 
"" What is the matter ? " I asked. He swore, but 
proceeded to explain. Perishing with hunger, he 
had crawled down to the pantry for a bit of ham, a 
biscuit, or something, and a roll of the ship had 
flung him against the sideboard, cutting his forehead 
open. Then came a clear voice from the stateroom 
of the Argentines : 

Hijo audaz de la llanura 

Y guardian de nuestro cielo . . . 

The rogues were hymning the pcmipero to which 
they owed those eight hours in the jaws of death. 

But the gale had blown itself out, though there 
was still a high sea running. Haggard faces looked 



324 ©n Blue Mater* 

out of the doorways with inquiring air and quickly 
drew back. A voice which I took for that of the 
first officer called from the head of the stairs, " It 's 
over, good people ! " And answering exclamations 
from the staterooms : '' Thank God ! thank God ! 
Oh ! can it be true ? Laudate Dominuin! We 're 
well out of that ! " But a thrill of life ran through 
the place as in a cemetery where the buried dead 
begin to rub their eyes and stretch their limbs. 
Someone touched me on the shoulder. It was the 
agent, in a dressing-gown, a bruise upon his chin, but 
joyous. " Ah ! what a scene ! " he said ; '^ I heard it 
all." He was speaking of the bride and bridegroom. 
In the midst of the peril they had fallen to praying, 
he said, then they had exchanged farewells, sobbing ; 
he had begged her to forgive him for having brought 
her on that voyage ; then a last kiss — a good many 
last kisses, in fact. '' All! Nina mia ! " '' Ah! moe 
poveo GeumoP And more last kisses, you know, 
but no Spanish grammar. So saying, he disappeared, 
but straightway returned, devious, and beckoned me 
to come quickly, for there was something worth see- 
ing. I followed him as best I might. He stopped 
before the open door of the advocate's stateroom, 
and, bursting with laughter, bade me look in. Such 
a creature was never seen ! I hardly recognized hu- 
manity in the formless thing that I saw stretched 
upon the floor, and from which came such wailings 
as Ernesto Rossi utters when, in his part of Louis 



1Fn iSitremis. 325 

XI., he is struck down by Nemours. It was the ad- 
vocate, flat on his face. Dressed in some English or 
American life-preserving garment or othei*, stuffed 
with cork, he had a hump on his back and a hump 
on his breast covered Avitli a cuirass of stout cotton- 
cloth, and round his chest there was a string of in- 
flated bladders that made him look like some strange 
mammal which, with much swollen glands, had fallen 
senseless to the earth. This outraa:eous load of ridi- 
cule awakened an infinite compassion for the poor 
crushed and unhappy man. The agent bent over 
him to try and bring him to his senses, and I left 
him to his pious task. 

With difficulty I reached the saloon, where there 
were already many passengers, the Marsigliese, the 
Tuscan, the mill-owner, the French commercial trav- 
eller, the tall priest, and others. Not one lady. 
The lightning still flashed from time to time, but the 
thunder was infrequent and far off. The sea was 
high and black, and no one could keep his feet. 
Strange nature of man ! It was already plain to be 
seen from the bearing of these people that the very 
tempest was a thing agreeable to their self-love, as if 
their not going to the bottom had somehow been the 
effect of every man's own conduct, and that they 
were having even then a foretaste of the pride with 
which in after years they would tell how they had 
fearlessly faced that dreadful peril. Amazing to see 
the coolness with which more than one whom I had 



326 



®n JBlue Mater* 



seen as pale as the dying put on tlie look of courage 

before tliose to whom he had exhibited not long: be- 

fore the most evident signs of abject terror. Some 

would pace back and forth 

from table to table, show^- 

ing off their sea legs as 

it. were, and laughing 

at every remark 

with lips 

that 

were 

still 

bloodless. 

The Mar- 

sigliese re- 

marked: 

''^Jeonesids 

enorrriement am- 

um^ Themill-ownci 

pretended to read tli«'«-;ii.i.' 

album ! Meanwliil-' iln' 

stewards brought lln' lu'w-^ 

from on deck. The sea had 

carried away some ])oats, had damaged the turkey 

coops a good deal, had drowned two bullocks, and 

stove in a deadeye forward. A sailor, hurled against 

the foremast, had been badly cut in the head. The 

canteen was a good deal shattered. But the mighty 

hull of the Galileo had suffered no further haim, and 




•ffn lEjtremis, 327 

had not stopped moving for an instant. At this last 
bit of news the flashing eyes of everyone gave token 
that human pride, but now humiliated, was set up once 
more, with bold faith in the work which the science 
and the industry of the race had made ; a work 
against which the full force of the mighty ocean had 
been vain menace and nothing more, hardly noticed 
and already forgotten. Yet, all the same, when 
opened doors gave us permission to go out, not one 
but heaved a sigh of satisfaction, as if only then as- 
sured that it was all over. 

Ah ! Formidable monster ! There you are again, 
and we are looking one another in the face once 
more ! Ugly and threatening, still, he was. Huge 
black rollers, crested with foam, rushed on in their 
dark tumult, shutting in the horizon on every side, and 
canopied by a gloomy vault of clouds, broken here 
and there with gray rifts of twilight, while there 
rolled beneath a mass of vapor in rapid and ill- 
boding motion, as if the strife were about to begin 
once more. The ship was S(^aking wet as if for 
those eight hours she had been under water. Every- 
where were dirty running streams and spreading 
pools. The deck houses, the masts, the boats were 
dripping with the sweat of battle. Aft and forward 
the men were hurrying about in their huge boots, 
drenched from head to foot, their wet hair plastered 
on face and neck, their bodies beaten out with 
fatigue. We met in the covered way the captain, 



328 On Blue Mater. 

panting, perspiring, red in the face. He passed on 
witliout notice. And so, tumbling against both 
sides of the gangway, wading through the coal- 
colored slush, and, jostled by the busy sailors, we 
]'eached the forecastle. 

Here were many persons come out of the cabins 
and holding on to the life-lines stretched across the 
deck for the use of the crew. They presented the 
doleful appearance of a throng that has been fleeing 
for days before an invading army. The commissary, 
who had repeatedly gone down into the cabin, de- 
scribed scenes fit to wring the heart and upset the 
stomach. He had seen down there tangled heaps of 
human bodies lying across each other ; breast to 
back, feet thrust into faces, clothes in disorder, legs, 
arms, dishevelled hair ; sprawling, rolling on the un- 
clean deck in the tainted air ; with sobs and wails 
and cries of despair, and callings on the saints re- 
sounding in every direction. Women on their knees 
in groups, with heads bent down, telling their beads 
and beating their breasts. Some in loud voice were 
making vows to go to a certain sanctuary if ever 
they saw their native land again ; for others nothing 
would do but they must confess themselves, and 
weeping they begged the commissary to bring the 
friar, who was, the while, exercising his oflice 
among the men. Several women had passionately 
prayed for permission to take leave of their hus- 
bands before they died ; others again to go on deck 



one instant only, and cast into the sea some saintly 
image or some crucifix to calm the waves. There 
were those who adjured him in God's name to turn 
the ship around and go back. One of the most 
frightened was that counterfeit lioness of a Bolognese, 
who sobbed and tore her hair, and called upon the 
saints like an actress on the stasre. And he told one 

CD 

or two cases of the most naive terror. A poor old 
woman had called him to her berth, and, placing in 
his hand seventy francs in silver, had begged him, in 
a voice choked with sobs, to see that this money 
reached her brother at Parana, since they all were to 
go to the Ijottom ; as if it were a law of nature that, 
whatevei* happened, the officers and crew would 
reach their destination. A poor peasant woman 
f alline: from her berth had had a miscarriag-e ; others 
had lost their speech from fright, and could only 
gesticulate and rave. Even then there were many 
who would not believe that the peril was over, but 
still clung convulsively to their berths and refused 
all comfort. 

These women, poor creatures, excited the more 
compassion because they had no pride to make 
them conceal their feelings. Those already on deck, 
all dazed and exhausted, and some with bruised 
faces and bandaged heads, looked at the sea with 
that eye which is said to be natural in the Green- 
landers ; petrified, as it were, by gazing all the while 
upon dismal gloom ; and gave a dolorous idea of the 



330 Qn Blue Mater. 

condition to whicli those below had been reduced. 
The talkative vivacity which usually succeeds an 
escape from peril had not yet supervened. All were 
yet so shaken that at every roller larger than the 
rest, at every deeper lurch, they crowded back from 
the bulwarks ; and, ready once more to fall into the 
old terror, would look at the bridge as if to get an 
encouragement from the faces of the officers. They 
only then began to grow a little calm when they saw 
the relieved fireman's watch, stripped to the waist, 
with crimson faces and bathed in sweat, come up 
from below, proud of their exertions and their vic- 
tory, and right glad of a little rest ; for during the 
gale they had all been on duty, — those who were 
shovelling coal held firmly by the rest lest they 
should be dashed against the boilers or hurled into 
the burning furnaces. 

But as the first stars came out, light-hearted care- 
lessness returned, and there arose a cackle as if all 
the sixteen hundred passengers were talking at once. 
Everybody was telling about it ; and there were 
descriptions — excited, interminable, a dozen times 
repeated — of all sorts of trifling occurrences, exag- 
gerated in each one's imagination until they grew to 
be events worthy of history or poetry. The half of 
these people, forgetting or denying their own abject 
fear, jeered at, pretended to despise, and, perhaps, 
really did despise the other half for the abject terror 
they had shown. 



irn Bjtremts. 



33^ 



After supper the forward part of tlie ship was 
vocal with singing and tipsy shouting. And at 
our table, too, there was mirth and jollity. We all 
fed like wolves for joy of being alive, and we 
set the terrors of the sea at nought. The feast 
wound up wdth a toast from the Marsigliese to the 
intrejpidite froide of the captain, pronounced with the 
knowing air of one who has been there before. The 
advocate did not appear. And, to the great sorrow 
of all, the young lady from Mestre also was not in 
her place. She had been much shaken by those 
eight hours of terror and fatigue, and had been 
attacked with bleeding at the lungs. 




CHAPTER XVIII. 



TO-:\[OKKOW ! 




HE next mornirig sea and sky 
were lovely, and the whole popu- 
lation of the Galileo was early in 
motion ; for, if the good weather 
held, we were to reach America 
the next evening, — perhaps early 
enough to land ; and it was time to get things ready, 
to consult with friends and relatives as to what was 
to be done. The most important matter was regis- 
tering — having their names put down for going 
ashore ; deciding, that is to say, whether or no they 
were to go to the commissary and be enrolled as in- 
tending to avail themselves of the Argentine Govern- 
ment's offer to pay the expense of landing to such 
immigrants as should ask it, giving board and 
lodging for five days and a free journey to those 
who meant to go up into the interior. This act 
of inscribing or not inscribing their names was 
called l)y the immigrants being or not being "^' 

332 



UO^/IDOITOW ! 333 

the imfmigrationr No doubt the advantages were 
great; but they mistrusted also greatly lest this 
generosity on the part of the Government, if it 
was a Government, should conceal a snare ; and 
that to accept it would bind them in some way 
as to their choice of place to work and condi- 
tions of contract. Nevertheless the greater part 
accepted ; and there was a continual procession 
to the commissary's room, which was as if turned 
into an agency. They went in, and after giving 
their names, mangled the one defenceless word they 
had to say in a hundred ways : Write me down for 
the emigration. — I accept the {^yanigration. — I go 
with the Z7? emigration. — Or else, bluntly and curtly : 
So and so, 7?2/gration. Many, moreover, went there 
without having made up their minds — just as one 
goes to consult a lawyer, — and then said no. The 
women were the most perplexed. They stopped to 
bethink themselves once more at the very door, 
scratching their foreheads as if the destiny of their 
lives were at stake ; and some, after giving their 
names and going away, came back to take them off 
the list again, saying they had heard that the Govern- 
ment was treacherous. 

Besides these, there was a crowd of emigrants 
who came to inquire about the custom-house, 
whether this article or that had to pay duty, 
and whether by favor or cleverness they might 
get out of it. And it was pitifid to hear what 



334 ®n Blue Mater* 

small matters they all were ; poor little presents 
they were bringing to their friends and relatives 
in America; a bottle of special wine, a cheese, a 
sausage, a pound of cakes from Naples or Genoa, 
a quart or so of oil, a box of dried hgs, even an 
apron full of beans, but from their own place, that 
corner of the garden which their friends would be 
sure to remember so well. And they asked whether 
a fife, or a bagpipe, or a blackbird, or a chest full 
of old pots and pans would be subject to duty. 
They all seemed full of terror at the idea of the 
custom-house at Montevideo and at Buenos Ayres, 
of which they had heard the most horrible tales; 
and they spoke of it as of an accursed forest, where 
were outlaws who would leave them but the bare 
shirt. The most to be pitied were the invalids 
and some lonely old people who feared that their 
sickly look would catch the eye of the American 
doctor as they went ashore, and they be sent to the 
lazzaretto. Others again were tormented by the 
dread lest their brothers or their friends should not, 
as promised, get on board in time to answer for their 
subsistence ; as the Argentine law allows no useless 
mouths to land. They all came to the commissary 
to ask what would happen to them in such or such 
a case, and then went out, sadly shaking their 
heads. 

And still the commissary wrote and wrote ; and 
saw pass before him, one after another, the pro- 



Uo^/IDorrow ! 335 

testers of tlie " Mountain " whom he had repri- 
manded, the young girls who had made iindesii'ed 
love to Iiim, the motliers who had disgusted him 
with their jealousies, the quarrellers whom he had 
had to separate and punish, the impudent lovers, 
the mischievous gossips. Each of these he recog- 
nized ; and had a smile, a nod of the head, or a good 
word for all of them. As I sat ])y his side I was 
never tired of looking at that little room, full of lists 
and registers, and thinkino; over the endless tales of 
wretchedness, tlie romantic lies of young damsels, 
the sobs of women, [ind the fierce words of dis- 
putants he had listened to. Moi'e than all, how- 
ever, the post-bags, tied, sealed, and heaped in a 
corner, attracted me. For these were snatches of 
the great dialogue between the two worlds. Who 
knows hoAV many letters there were here from 
women for the third or fourth time beseeching news 
of a son or husband who had given no sign for 
years ; prayers that these would return or send for 
them ; supplications for aid ; announcements of 
sickness or death ; pictures of girls which their 
fathers would not recognize ; despairing complaints 
addressed to faithless lovers ; shameless lies from 
faithless wives ; latest counsels from the old ; — all 
this, mingled with bankers' letters bristling with 
figures ; amorous notes from ballerinas ; circulars 
from dealers in vermouth ; bundles of newspapers 
for Italian colonists eager after news of their coun- 



2,z^ ®n Blue Mater^ 

try ; perhaps the last poem of Carducci, or Verga's 
ne^^^ novel ; a confusion of papers of every color, 
written with weeping, with laughter, and with 
frenzy, in hovels, in palaces, in workshops. All 
these sacks were to be sent far and wide in a few 
days from the mouths of the Plata to the confines 
of Brazil, to tlie shores of the Pacific, to the interior 
of Paraguay and up the slopes of the Andes ; awaken- 
ing joy, fear, grief, remorse, Avhich, in their turn 
crammed into other sacks, would go back o\'er the 
same journey ; and heaped up in a little room, just 
as these that were before me, would see other poor 
creatures pass by returning to the Old World, less 
poor perhaps, but not more happy than when they 
had left it with hopes of better fortune. 

Meanwhile the procession went on: ".So and so, 
under the Government." — " Tizio, ^vith tlie migra- 
tion." — " Caio, landing and shelter." The unex- 
pected appearance of the Bolognese here made an 
interruption. She came filled with fury at a new and 
mortal offence from a cariaglia d^erboff, ^vho passing 
l^y and touching the mysterious pouch liad said, in 
evident allusion to the prejDosterous surmise : " They 
pay duty, I suppose." She Avanted him on deck, in 
irons, legs and arms, or she would make declaration 
before all the consuls in America, that the ship's 
officers encouraged the most shameless clodhoppei's 
{l)olet(iri) in the third class to insidt well-conducted 
girls. As she was near America she did not speak 



XTo^/IDorrow ! 



?>?>! 



of her relatives in the journalisiu. The commissary 
cut her short (la rim- 
becco) but without losing 
his temper ; promised as 
soon as the inscription 
was over he would see 
her righted ; and turned 
short round to a couple 
of angry peasants who 
came to have their 
names taken off the list, 
for they did not want 
to fall into the hands of 
those hangman thieves 
(Jjoia de lade)') who 
off ered to land emigrants 
gratis so as to be the 
first to plunder them 
and make up to their 
women. They had evi- 
dently picked up some- ,' | 
thing fresh and hot in 
their part of the ship, 
^diere agitators were 
working to excite them. 
I went forward, and 
there, sure enough, was 
the old fellow in the 
green jacket haranguing . ^,, ..^ ^Boiognc.e." 




338 



Qn Blue Matet^ 



away to a larger audience than usual ; and leaning, 
from political sympathy, perhaps, on the anchor, 

which was painted red, 

and shaking his loose gray 

locks. The short work 

which the captain had 

made of the 




" Ibaranguing awa^ to a laiget aubfence tban usual." 

seven Protest had not intimidated him in the least, 
and he had threatened to torite to the paiJers. His 
nearness to the land of liberty emboldened him all 



Uo*/lDorrow t 339 

the more, and not only did he not lower his voice 
when one of those suckers of the people's blood 
passed by, but rather raised it, rude and harsh as it 
was, like the sound of a tin horn, while the veins of 
the neck swelled lit to burst the skin. He spoke as 
if he were not making the voyage for the first time ; 
said they must look out for the Argentines, the 
Italian agents, the consuls, the go-betweens of every 
color, who were all in swindling league together to 
get fat out of the immigration. They were to look 
after their things as they went ashore, or they would 
be robbed outright ; they were to have an eye to 
their wives and daughters. Dreadful things had 
been done by the government people in the face of 
day before the very eyes of fathers and mothers. 
And as for shelter, tumble-down sheds ; the rain 
came through the roof on to the beds ; there w^as 
either nothing to eat or else they put something 
into the soup which made a man too stupid to put 
two and two together, and then the rascals came 
and made a contract with him. '' Look owi^ ficjliuoli^^ 
he shouted ; '' Look to it or you will be skinned 
\assassinati\ worse than in the old country. He is 
a gone man that trusts them ! " 

But he was not the only one to hold forth. Other 
groups here and there were hanging on the words of 
other orators who had started up that morning. On 
the midship-deck was the professor ex-cook, the 
player on the ocarina. He had been everywhere 



340 <^n Blue Mater* 

and done everything, had advice to give to every- 
body into whatever part of America they were 
going, just as if he had lived there many years, and 
had plied every trade in every quarter of the globe. 
He spoke of the snares laid for emigrants when they 
had a little money ; lands, far-away lands sold for a 
song, fertile, well watered, where they were to be- 
come rich in ten years' time ; and the poor gulls, 
when they reached the spot with empty pockets, 
found sandy deserts, fever in the air, the Indians all 
around them, lions on the prowl by night, and ser- 
pents ^ve yards long crawling through the houses. 
And fleeing from starvation they had to go afoot 
hundreds of miles before finding a habitable spot, 
drenched with rain for weeks at a time, or scourged 
with hideous gales, which swept away cows and 
dogs like dried leaves. At this many of his hearers 
suspected some exaggeration, shrugged their shoul- 
ders and went away ; while many more swallowed it 
all and stood there with their eyes upon the deck. 
But in other groups the optimists had the floor. A 
new world — no more taxes — no more military ser- 
vice — no more tyranny. The soil teemed as soon as 
touched by the plough ; meat at fifty centimes the 
kilogramme (five cents the pound) ; tracts with four 
thousand inhabitants where the sour face of a signore 
was never seen. And they told of quick fortunes, 
overflowing granaries ; of field laboi'ers who had 
private tutors for their children. America forever ! 



Sangue dhm cane! Will yuii hold your tongues, 
you calamity howlers ! 

In the midst of all this preoccu^^ation it was evi- 
dent that immortal woman had taken, for the present, 
a back seat, — that many attachments would have to 
be thrown over. No more were seen those steady 
eyes that watched the fair one hour by hour for the 
chance of putting a word in her ear or a black and 
blue mark on her arm. But this very preoccupa- 
tion left the few faithful ones only the more free. 
Amongst these last I marked the poor Modenese 
bookkeeper who had gone back to his old contem- 
plation, a little farther oif than before but more dead 
in love than ever; as if the rouo-h handling; he had 
received, the boxed ears and the disgrace he had 
suffered, — poor wretch, — had only enhanced the love- 
liness of her for whom he had gone throuo^h so much. 
I looked at him from the bri(.l«;e for a lono^ time. 
He never moved his head or bent his neck or turned 
his eyes for a single instant from the girl. She was 
in her usual place, knitting, with her little brother 
at her side, her fair foiin more upright, sweet, and 
fresh than ever. Her face, clouded for many days, 
was placid again ; and I was not long in perceiving 
that all this lowly and unwearied adoration from 
the poor, lonely, scorned young fellow had awakened 
a sisterly feeling of pity and kindness which perhaps 
she thought it was due to him to let him perceive ; 
for as I was on the point of moving away I saw her 



342 ©n Blue Mater. 

usual quiet, indifferent look as she cast it around her, 
fixed for an instant, perhaps not for the first time, 
upon his face with a lovely expression of kindness 
and sympathy. Ah ! Ye Gods ! The fellow lighted 
up like a mirror when the sun falls upon it ; he 
shook all over, he heaved a sigh and passed a hand 
over his forehead as if astounded that the whole 
ship should not be aware of the wonder that had 
come to pass. 

But no one took any heed. And this general pre- 
occupation gave me the chance to move about freely 
for a while among the crowd and catch, flying, many 
a bit of talk. The expectation of landing soon had 
aroused in almost all of them some curiosity about 
the cities and the regions they were to live in. 
They asked the officers about them, — or the more 
educated of their fellow-passengers ; pulling out old 
creased letters from their kinsfolk and acquaintance, 
gesticulating over them, re-reading them or handing 
them about with that extraordinary reverence which 
your illiterate always shows for a written docu- 
ment, which he supposes, and naturally enough, 
capable of various subtle interpretations. I heard 
mention made of many farm colonies with names 
dear to my soul, — Esperanza, Pilar, Cavour, Garibaldi, 
New Turin, Candelaria. 

But, gracious Heaven ! what it was to see the dense 
ignorance in which they almost all were plunged; 
their utter lack of any ideas about States or bound- 



XTo^/llborrow ! 343 

aries, as if South America were an island a hundred 
miles or so in circuit, where the provinces were 
within gunshot of one anotlier — Buenos Ayres, 
Tucuman, Mendoza, Assumption, Montevideo, 
Entre Rios, Chili, the United States, — all forming in 
the minds of the greater part an inextricable mass 
of confusion ; so that the keenest and most patient 
man in the world would have been at a loss ^vhere to 
begin to get order out of the chaos, or throw light on 
any part of it. And to think that many even of the 
youngest had been to school and had learned to 
read and write ! It w^as hopeless. Here and there 
little family groups were discussing ways and means : 
" So, five for the landing, three for the inn ; we '11 
say so much for the first day." Farther on : Vcqnt- 
vino ^e Musario^ quatto i}e?:z^ e meza — mi muorz^ e 
pane pe' u viaggio ; restano cinclie ducate^ senza cunta 
e scarpe pe Ckcillo. " The tender up to Kosario, 
four dollars and a half — and a mouthful to eat on 
the way ; there '11 be five ducats over without 
counting little Dicky's shoes." 

I heard among other things that there was bad news 
of the young lady from Mestre, upon whom nearly 
all of them were depending for advice and patronage. 
They seemed to think she had had a fall ; and even 
supposed she might be dying, but that it was kept 
secret because the captain was somehow (they had 
not the slightest idea how) in fault. The Mestre 
peasant anxiously inquired about her. All his family 



344 ®n Mm Mater. 

were once more crouched in the old nest between 
the turkey pens and the great hogshead, under an 
awning of diapers put out to dry, beneath whose 
shade young Galileo, red as a boiled lobster, was 
having his little dinner like a calf. " Ah^ povareta ! " 
cried the peasant, '^ that such a thing should happen 
to an angel like that ! She is too good, she cannot 
live long ! " And the wife added : '' Tell her that 
we will pray to our saint for her, God bless her ! " 

The father was going to trust the Government; 
had put his name down for the amigrazion^ he was 
not going to believe all the clown's chatter (jpanta- 
lonae) which those idiots on the forecastle got off. 
Then he asked me if it were really true, what the 
ex-cook, the wiseacre of the midship-deck, had told 
them, that from the equator on, the water was fit to 
drink (la gera hona da hevav )^ because the great 
American river drove back the waves of the sea. 
But he interrupted himself to exclaim : " Here are 
our new (paroni) masters ! " It was the five Argen- 
tines in company with the Neapolitan priest, who 
came forward for the first time to have a look at 
their guests. The priest must have been discus- 
sing some financial matter ; for he said loudly, 
moving his hand like a fan : '' Si se encontraran los 
accionistas para iin graii banco agricola-colonizadorr 
And I joined them, urged by a stronger sympathy 
in those last days for the children of the land where 
so many of my fellow-citizens were to have their lot 



tTo^^/lftorrow ! 345 

in life. And I searched their faces to find what 
impression was made ; luit they looked on and said 
nothing. Nevertheless, their eyes and their every 
movement betrayed tlie proud satisfaction tliey felt 
at seeing all those people who were come to seek 
hospitality in their country, the greater part for life, 
and whose children would grow up citizens of the 
republic, would speak its language and not their 
own, and would perhaps be, as often happens, 
ashamed of their foreign origin. 

Perhaps in looking at the emigrants the gentle- 
men saw in imagination all these clodhoppers 
( mangiatori di terra) and Ligurian traffickers at 
work, beheld loaded barks glide down the waters 
of the Parana and the Uruguay, and saw the new 
railways of the tropics stretch across the forest, the 
sugar-cane rise on the plains of Tucuman, the vine 
upon the slopes of Mendoza, the tobacco plant upon 
the Gran Chaco, — saw houses and palaces rise by 
hundreds and by thousands, and leagues upon 
leagues of desert glow and blossom under the sweat- 
rain of their hard toil. There came surging into my 
mind so many things to say to them : '' You Avill re- 
ceive all these people kindly will you not ? The}^ are 
hardy volunteers who have come to swell the ranks 
of that army with which you are conquering a 
world. They are Avorthy men, believe me ; they are 
industrious, as you will see ; they are sober, they are 
patient, they do not emigrate to get rich, but to find 



346 ®n Blue Mater^ 

bread for their children, and will easily grow fond of 
the country that feeds them. They are poor, but 
not because they have not worked; they are un- 
taught, but not from any fault of theirs ; proud of 
their country, but it is because they have a vague 
sense of its bygone glory ; sometimes they are 
quick in quarrel, but you, descendants of the con- 
querors of Mexico and Peru, are you not also some- 
times quick in quarrel ? Let them love and boast of 
their far-off country, for if they could have the heart 
to be false to its memory they could not become 
attached to your soil. Protect them from dishonest 
middlemen, do them justice when they require it, 
and do not make them feel, poor creatures, that 
they are tolerated intruders. Treat them gently 
and kindly. We shall all be so thankful to you 
for it. They are our blood ; we love them. Into 
your hands we commend them and with all our 
hearts ! " 

I do not know what stupid — and worse than 
stupid, cowardly — reserve it was that held me back 
from saying all this. They would have listened 
with amazement, no doubt, but they might have 
been moved ; perhaps not without being a little 
softened. The sea was so lovely. It seemed as if 
it ought to be reflected in every bosom. Since morn- 
ing many sailing ships and steamers had been seen 
bound for the Plata River, and flights of birds had 
come around the Galileo to bid her welcome. 



Uo^/IDorrow ! 347 

As soon as tlie bustle of inscription was over, every- 
thing had quieted down and people were inclined to 
be good-natured. Some emigrants, who had got 
leave to come into the after-cabin to get up a raffle 
for a silver watch and an engraving of the Madonna, 
on behalf of a poor family, were very successful in- 
deed at sixty centimes the ticket. The drawing, as 
the prospectus set forth, was to take place on the 
morrow, '^ with the necessary guarantees," l^ehind 
the butcher's shop. Not a quarrel arose after dinner. 
The emigrants were treated to a dish of hraciole 
and potatoes (Irish stew) that softened many a 
heart. Our repast too was such as to make the 
single eye of the Genoese gleam with satisfaction, 
and had an additional flavor from the idea of that 
" something to follow " which Brillat-Savarin says 
is necessary to the perfect success of a dinner. This 
^Ssomething" was the thought of what the ship 
would look like on the morrow when the land hove 
in sight. 

The talk, under the attraction of America, all ran 
upon the countries we were approaching, as if we had 
been there before. In three days we should hear 
Polyeucte at the Colon Theatre ; and at the Solis, 
Crespino e la Comare with Baldelli. The plan of 
the new Square at Buenos Ayres and that of the 
new Italian Hospital at Montevideo were discussed. 
The presidents of the two republics were dissected 
joint by joint, and many heated comments made upon 



348 Qn Blue Mater* 

those newspapers whicli were opposed to or in favor 
of Italian immigration. The Garibaldian alone said 
nothing, and the veil of sadness on his face was deeper 
than usual. My two next-door neighbors were silent 
too, but on their faces there was an unusual expres- 
sion; the look of hate, of course, — but now animated 
by a new thought, the expectation of something to 
happen, which each hoped would decide their contest 
unfavorably to the other. They did not look at one 
another, but there seemed to be a grim, silent fight 
between the two, as if they were secretly stabbing 
one another beneath the table-cloth. They both 
reached out at once for the salt, but perceiving in 
time that their hands would touch, drew back and 
took no salt. The mere thought that I was soon to 
reach America and have that miserable spectacle 
before my eyes no longer, was enough to cheer me. 
Suddenly I remarked that the lady of the Char- 
treuse and the mother of the piano-player were 
missing ; and as I could not suppose they were sea- 
sick at that late day, I asked the agent, who was 
bet^veen me and the advocate, what the matter was. 
" What ! You don't know ! You are in America 
already one would think ! A regular scene ! " For 
some days the '^ tamer" had had hints that the 
other was speaking ill of her and had shrewd notions 
what it was about. She had seen it in the faces of 
some of the passengers, who would look at her and 
smile, at certain hours, and would peep into her 



tlo^/lDorrow t 349 

stateroom as they passed. That morning, however, 
her maid, set on to watch had found out all about 
it. Our serpent in petticoats had declared she was 
getting delirium tremens ; was giving horrid accounts 
of her stateroom, where indeed she had been several 
times to taste her Maraschino di Zara, and was 
saying that it was a perfect liquor shop, with bottles 
under the pillows, sticky glasses all over everywhere, 
and a large collection of all sorts of mineral waters 
powders, and pastilles, to repair in the morning the 
damage done by drinking overnight. But now she 
said it was no use trying to repair it ; the thing had 
gone too far, and the doctor had remarked that the 
gentlemen had better not go too near her with their 
lighted cigars. The fat lady had heard all this 
exactly at the moment when she had been having a 
fresh nip,had gone straight to the dear creature's state- 
room, and, meeting hei* in the corridor when two or 
three people were by, had said in an uncommonly 
distinct voice thi'ee words to her — not more than 
three, — but spoken with the look and tone of her 
profession, and of that kind which good old, mellow 
Chartreuse, the true authentic article made by the 
well-deserving Friars, and taken in suitable doses, is 
alone capable of inspiring. The other, undaunted, 
had answered with a single word of three syllables 
(one in English), worth her adversary's three to- 
gether. Then — but then the stewardesses ran up, 
and the contestants in a paroxysm of rage had retired. 



350 ©n JBlue Mater* 

storming, each to her own stateroom, where half an 
hour afterwards they fainted. 

But as he said this the agent suddenly bethought 
himself and seemed to be trying to intercept glances 
between two persons at the table who were at a 
distance from him. And, sure enough, I heard him 
the next moment singing to himself Hamlet's long cry 
in the little Theatre of the Palace (sic) : ^' 0-o-o-o-h ! 
my prophetic soul ! " Straightway he seized my arm 
and confided to me his amazing discovery. " Look ! " 
he said, " but don't let them see you doing it." And 
I did look and was not long in seeing what he meant. 
Every two or three minutes the fair, blue, vacant 
eyes of the blonde lady would rest for an instant on 
the captain ; and his hard red countenance would 
gleam for an instant with a smile half concealed by 
his bushy eyebrows and bristling mustaches, like 
a bit of blue that shows through a rift in the 
clouds, and then is covered ; but the blue eyes 
looked again, and the rift appeared again. Not a 
doubt about it, the little game went on regularly ; 
there was an understanding between the fair blonde 
crown and the rough red poll. The siren had sung, 
the rugged bear had listened ; the Galileo was 
brought to. " Ah ! now I understand," said the 
agent, in a rage, " why there was no ^ scene ' — Ah ! 
Porcaie a hordo no ne veuggio, forsooth ! U'gh ! You 
old sea Tartuffe ! This is too much ! " All the same 
he was not ill pleased at being relieved from the in- 



cubiis of an unsolved mystery. And as we went on 
deck he rubbed his hands. '^ One more — Now what 
we have to do is to find out whom yonder young 
lady will next snip with her scissors, — if indeed 
there be another to snip." 

So he and the others laughed with all their might 
as they nodded and looked at the round back of the 
professor, who leaned over the rail and discoursed 
with the Neapolitan priest about the constellation 
of Orion. It was a charming night and a smiling 
augury of a good end to the voyage. To the west, 
among myriads of stars, arose the zodiacal light, in 
form of a huge whitish pyramid, the apex almost 
reaching the zenith and the circuit embracing a 
quarter of the horizon. The track of the Milky 
Way, between the Scorpion and the Centaur, and 
the four flaming diamonds of the Southern Cross, 
stood out clear and vivid. The Magellan Clouds, 
those vast, solitary nebulae which made the heart of 
Humboldt beat and his pen blaze, formed around 
the Southern Pole two wondrous white spots, which 
shaded oif into the infinite. Falling stars, seeming 
larger than with us, from the pure atmosphere, were 
seen on every side like shooting rockets which 
streaked the sky with silvery red and blue and 
golden light. So clear was the sky, that the ship 
with every black spar and shroud and rope was 
sharply drawn upon it ; and, looking from the piaz- 
zetta, there were stars among the yards, the lifts, 



35 2 ^n Blue Mater* 

the braces, and stars reflected by the glassy sea ; so 
that we seemed to move aloug in an aiiy bark amid 
the splendors of the firmament. Yet scarcely any 
one looked at all this. Each of those seventeen 
hundred living atoms had some hope or fear or re- 
gret within him, compared with which these mil- 
lions of woi'lds were of no more importance than the 
dust which his foot strikes out of the earth. 

In the forward part of the ship there was indeed 
a busy hum of conversation, Ijut more steady and 
intense than on other evenings. No singing, no 
shouting. It was clear that all were talking of 
serious matters. At the moment of separation be- 
tween the men and the women there could be 
heard many a " Good-night ! " f idl of meaning and 
" To-morrow, then ! " in a hundred ringing tones. " It 
is the last night ! We land to-morrow ! Twenty- 
four hours and we are in America ! " And even when 
they had been below some time there floated 
up through the hatches a sonorous murmur as of 
an excited crowd. It was the tide made in a sea of 
souls by a world as they drew near to it. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



AMERICA. 




HAT a pleasant awakening ! Those 
words ! " Tu-tlay we shall be ou 
shore," which expressed the sen- 
timents of everyone, had a fresh 
sound and I'enewed power for us 
all. And one felt, in saying them 
over, the physical pleasure which is had in throwing 
the arms around a good solid granite column. With- 
out taking other reasons into account, we were most 
anxious to get on shore, because in a long voyage a 
man grows tired, exasperated beyond endurance at 
that perpetual reeling and staggering, that bending 
and dodging to which he is forced by the motion of 
the ship and the narrowness of everything; that con- 
tinual salt smell, that constant odor of wood and of 
tar. What pleasure to see the streets, to snuff the 
country air, to sleep between four walls that stay 
upright and not feel that the house we are in is thrill- 
ing with a special life and one on which after all 
23 353 



354 ®n Blvte Mater, 

our own depends. It did so happen that we passed 
the Canaries and the Cape Verdes at night ; and for 
the same reason we had missed the little Brazilian 
island of Fernando de Noronha, which everyone had 
longed to get a glimpse of, so as to break for a mo- 
ment the interminable monotony of the sea. Not a 
hand's breadth of land for eighteen days since we 
passed the Straits of Gibraltar. I should have liked 
to hold a clod of earth in my fingers for the pleasure 
of feeling it and smelling it, like forbidden fruit. 
And at last, at last, we were to have enough of it : 
a couple of pear-shaped pieces, namely, covering to- 
gether thirty-eight millions of square kilometres, and 
each equal to about seventy Italies. 

As we expected to reach Montevideo by daylight, 
there began at dawn of day among the emigrants 
a general scrubbing, hasty and unsparing, for they 
desired not to compromise the national honor by 
making their appearance in x\merica as savage and 
slovenly beggai-s. Fresh water was served out freely, 
since it was the last day ; and they began to wash 
furiously, like so many coal miners just come up. 
There was a plunging of heads into basins and a 
puffing and a sluicing and a splashing ; while the 
water ran about the decks as if it rained. Many 
were dragging combs through capillary forests, virgin 
since Genoa ; others, barefooted, were polishing up 
their shoes with moistened rags. They overhauled 
their creased and threadbare clothes,they brushed and 



Hmerica. 355 

they beat them. The Venetian barber, imitator of 
dogs, had set up an open-air sho23 near the bulwark 
on the port side, where the to-be-shaved ones, seated 
in long rows like Turks at Constantinople, awaited 
each his turn, scraping their cheeks with both hands 
and chaffing one another. Arms and shoulders of 
naked babies, and of women in their petticoats 
gleamed by hundreds everywhere. Some brushed 
each other's hair and thinned out the too flourishing 
population of the boys' heads. Others hastily 
patched and darned their jackets and their stockings, 
pulling over tattered old bags and valises for fresh 
clothes and linen. Joyful anticipation had reawak- 
ened cordiality ; families helped one another with 
little services and spoke their mutual thanks loudly 
and heartily. A thrill of young life was awakened 
everywhere. And above the lively murmur of the 
throng was heard from time to time the cry ^' Viva 1' 
America ! " or the his^h shrill falsetto with which the 
people of North Italy finish the verses of a song. 
At breakfast, enlivened by the notes of fife and bag- 
pipe (piffero, zampogna), a special ration of biscuit 
was served out. Everyone filled his pockets, and 
the canteen man poured out endless glasses of rum, 
like a regimental sutler on the day of battle. After 
all which the passengers sat down quietly or leaned 
over the rail, awaiting the appearance of the New 
World. 

But the hours went by and the land did not heave 



35^ ®n :Blue Mater. 

in sight. The sky was covered with clouds, but the 
horizon was clear, and the sharp blue sea line was 
unbroken by a shade of promise. After eight bells, 
the passengers began to show symptoms of weariness. 
They that had so much patience for three weeks 
had hardly a crumb left for the last few hours. 
Many complained angrily : " Why did we not see 
land ? Was the reckoning wrong ? We should have 
seen it long ago. Now we shall not get there by 
daylight. The Lord knows when we shall get thei*e. 
Italian steamers ! There 's the whole story. Lucky 
if we get there in a year." And they glowered and 
made cutting remarks when an officer passed by. 
Some, too, feigning to give up all hope of getting 
there, shrugged their shoulders, turned away from 
the sea, and pretended to busy themselves with some- 
thing else. But, all the same, every time the signal 
officer who had charge of the watch looked through 
his glass, as he stood on the bridge, they fixed their 
eyes on him in breathless silence, and not a murmur 
was heard until the careless air with which he 
lowered his instrument destroyed hope. But he 
did not move from his post, which showed that he 
expected every moment to catch sight of something. 
The peasant with the abbreviated nose, bent on 
being the first to announce America, stood halfway 
up the ladder, ready to catch the first indication from 
the officer and cry out ; and eveiy time the glass was 
levelled he gave the crowd a majestically comic sign 



Hmerica* 



357 



for silence, like a tribune of the people at a moment 
of crisis. 

Among us also in the after part of the ship there 
was expectation. The ladies were seated facing the 
west, the men M^ere 
strung^ about the 
poop much excited. 
The young lady 
from Mestre was in 
her usual place, be- 
tween the Garibal- 
dian and her aunt, 
paler in face and 
feebler in look than 
ever before, but not 
more sad ; indeed 
her eyes were 
brighter than we 
had yet seen them, 
and in her counte- 
nance there was a 
wondrous sweet- '^^^ ^'^"^^ ®^'''' 

ness, as if a fi-esh beauty had come there since her 
attack of bleeding. For the tirst time she was 
all in black, and the translucent clearness of hei* 
complexion was, set off so stiikingly by the dress 
she w^ore that it was like the sii^ht of a livino^ face 
under a sable pall. She, with her aunt, appeared 
to be delicately folding u[) little packets of some- 




358 On Blue Maten 

thing upon her lap. There also were the mother 
of the piano-pla^^er, and the plump lady, seated on 
the opposite side of the deck ; the former with an 
hysterical face showed fine white teeth and looked 
more venomous than ever ; the latter with her great 
round countenance, seemed steeped in alcoholic beati- 
tude, and thought, as it would seem, of nothing at 
all. The other ladies, sitting about in their light 
dresses, made masses of brilliant color, like a row of 
flags hung out on a holiday. But here too there 
were signs of impatience. Little feet patted the 
deck ; hands switched fans about with nervous 
abruptness ; heads were tossed ; the conversation 
took a bilious turn, and though they did not utter 
the cross nonsense that the third-class people did 
about the officers, it was in the minds and flashed 
from the eyes of all of them. 

But now the young lady rose, leaning on her aunt's 
arm, and the two, with their little parcels, went 
towards the third class. On the piazzetta they were 
joined by the Venetian servant, who was waiting 
for them with other matters in her hands. As this 
was to be the lady's last visit to the forward part of 
the ship I was anxious to see what she did ; so I 
ran through the second-class gangway and gained 
the bridge. 

She had probably chosen that time so as to be 
less observed, the attention of all the passengers being 
fixed upon the horizon. From the bridge I could 



Hmetica* 359 

follow all her movements in that crowd of people, 
and was amazed to see how many she knew and how 
much good she had done in those few days. She 
gave the poor peasant, ill of fever, and his wife, the 
fruit she had got together; gave clothes to another 
family near the foremast ; to another she gave letters 
and papers. Then she approached the Genoese girl, 
and though I could not see well for the crowds 
around, I thought she slipped a ring on the girl's 
finger. The boys gathered around her from every 
side ; some of the smallest followed her about, and 
she patted their cheeks with one hand and gave 
them sweetmeats with the other. She went to 
speak with the family from Mestre and kissed young 
Galileo. Several men came up to her, hat in hand, 
and seemed to ask advice. Here and there she shook 
hands as if to take leave. Her white face and faded 
hair would be lost for an instant in the throng and 
then appear again. She passed within the forecastle, 
then came out once more at the canteen, went down 
to the sick bay, and I saw her next by the capstan, 
in midst of a group of women who thrust out their 
little babies for her to touch. Wherever she went, 
grinning faces were composed, loud voices lowered ; 
all moved out of the way and faced round towards 
her. Her face showed mortal weariness, but wore 
throughout the same sweet smile, while a faint 
tremor in her pale lips and filmy eyes, where all her 
life seemed centred, was like the last gleam of the 



36o Qn Blue Mater* 

sun upon a fair white rose already declining to the 
earth. When she reached the covered way to go aft 
again, she stopped and panted with a hand upon 
her breast. The peasant woman from Mestre came 
up at this moment, fervently kissed the sleeve of her 
dress, and then ran hastily away. The lady moved 
on slowly. 

And the land did not heave in sight. But I felt no 
impatience. I was half angry with myself, because 
the idea of reaching that America so much longed 
for raised in me no more emotion. It was another 
moral phenomenon like what I had felt during the 
first days of the voyage on reaching the Yellow 
Sea ; a kind of syncope, a total abeyance of curiosity 
and of pleasure. As if not one of the ardent longings 
with which I had come on board were left with me, 
the idea of this new land awakened only miserable 
forebodings of the annoyance there would be on 
landing, — and then I had a disagreeable taste in 
my mouth from a bad cigar. Even the excitement 
of the others disgusted me ; fools, to wish to go 
back to every-day troubles, as if these last three 
weeks had not been one of the pleasantest periods 
of their lives. So much so, that to get out of their 
way I went and sat down in the commissary's room 
and positively fell to reading over an old number 
of the Caffaro^ cursing, between one column and 
another, books, travellei's, tales, lectures, the press, 
which make us familiar with foreign countries and 



Bmerica^ 361 

preclude all possibility of first impressions. Great 
Heaven ! it is a fact and I on^-lit to be ashamed to 
confess it ; but here, a few miles only from the 
shores of America, I cudgelled my brains over a 
ridiculous charade in a Genoese newspaper, a cha- 
rade of which I could not guess '' my second " : 

" My second is always in motion," 

and I pervaded in thought the realms of nature to find 
the secret, while the old hunch-backed mariner, as 
indifferent to America as I, polished the brass handle 
of the door, droning out a Ligurian ballad : 

"" Gh' ea na votta na baella figgia — 
Once I saw a pretty maid — " 

in a cracked and nasal tone which finally sent me 
to sleep. 

All at once the song ceased as if the old fellow's 
attention had been suddenly attracted elsewhere, and 
I heard from the bridge a long, long, endless, doleful 
cry : " Land ho ! " 

A thrill ran through me. It was like tlie announce- 
ment of a great unexpected event, the wide, formless 
vision of a world, which I'ea wakened at once within 
me curiosity, wonder, enthusiasm, joy, and made me 
spring to my feet with face suffused. 

Another cry, the cry of a thousand voices, answered 
the first, and at once the ship rolled heavily to star- 
board as the crowd all rushed that way. 

I ran on deck and searched the horizon. For a 



362 Qn Blue Mater^ 

few moments I saw nothing ; then looking closely 
I distinOTished a reddish streak which was lost to 
right and left in two long tongues, like a light cloud 
that was kissing the face of ocean. 

And I stood there for a moment, gazing like the 
rest, and amazed I knew not why. 

Many cries broke out around me : " ^stdmos a casa ! 
Glie semmo finalmente ! Quatre heures, vingt-cinq 
mimttes ! " exclaimed the Marsio^liese, lookins: at his 
watch, '' Vlieure que favais prevuey " Ecco la vera 
t^erra del progreso ! — There is the true land of pro- 
gress ! " cried the mill-owner. The tenor merel}^ said 
in a weighty manner : ^' L' America ! " The plump 
lady, somewhat elevated, called companionably to 
one and to another by name to look and be Joyful 
over that strip of land. Perhaps it looked larger to 
her than to us. The only locked-up face was that of 
the Garibaldian ; and I felt a new sense of repul- 
sion. It was too much, I thought, and a poor-spirited 
thing, to regard the whole universe as dead because 
one has lost half a dozen illusions. 

I ran forward where a great silence had succeeded 
to the first tumult. All stood with eyes fixed on 
that strip of bare earth, all quiet and absorbed as if 
before the face of the Sphynx from whom they 
would gladly have extorted the secret of their future 
life ; or as if beyond that reddish streak they could 
see already the boundless plains where they were to 
sweat and toil and leave their bones at last. Few 



Hmettca* 363 

spoke. The ship drove on and the streak grew 
higher and longer. It was the coast of Uruguay. 
No sign of vegetation or of habitation. Many who 
had been looking: forward to a land of wonders cried 
out. " Why, it 's just like our own country ! " A 
group was talking of Garibaldi who had fought 
upon that shore ; and to find after so many days an 
unknown land where his name was as great as in 
their own country, enhanced his glory most enor- 
mously. A young peasant woman with her child 
upon her knee began to cry. Her husband nudged 
her hard with his elbow and said she YsK'^ fabioca^ — 
a silly little fool. I asked a woman near by what it 
was about. *' TJ-n'' idea^'' she said. ^' The sight of 
America is enough to give her a pang, because it 
makes her think she will never see her own land 
again, and so she cannot help crying." 

I went on towards the forecastle and there I found 
a couple of Turinese workmen seated against the 
bulwark. Ah ! I never shall forget that ! On the 
broad ocean, in sight of the New World and within 
reach of their new life, they were disputing as to the 
precise whereabouts of the Ti'attoria di Casal Bor- 
gone, just as if they had been at the corner of the 
Via del Deposito and the Via del Carmine or of the 
Via del Carmine and the Via dei Quartieii. One of 
them got angry about it. In general the women 
were more thoughtful than the men. None were 
really merry but the boys who kicked and pinched 



364 ®n Mnc Mater* 

each other for very joy. Some of the old people 
turned their backs to the sea as if they had nothing 
to hope from that strip of earth except to die there, 
in peace ; and the old, old couple of the forecastle 
seated on the bitts as usual, were fast asleep. 

But a little later, when the first effects of that 
sight had worn off, there broke out, as if by concert, a 
boundless jollity, a chorus of singing and whistling, a 
shouting of people who crowded around the canteen 
holding up pots and glasses ; a sparkling up in every 
direction, as if they had in these few moments swal- 
lowed large draughts of generous wine. All the 
performers performed. The old fellow of the mid- 
ship deck began to grunt in character, surrounded 
by admirers grinning from ear to ear. The noseless 
peasant took off the faces of women frightened dur- 
ing the late gale, and drew down a hurricane of ap- 
plause. The hairy mountebank came from forward 
and with sad face made cartwheels upon the deck 
between two rows of delighted women ; and the 
ex-porter himself, he of the bald head, in a transport 
of joy tore out the leaves of his famous album and 
gave them to his friends, who straightway formed 
each around himself a circle of chuckling sight-seers; 
so that from the kitchen to the butcher's shop it was 
nothing but suggestive shrieks of laughter, grinning 
faces, shaking shoulders, and a deafening clatter of 
music, singing and tipsy cries, above which rose from 
time to time the lonor-drawn howl of the Venetian 



Hmertca* 365 

barber as he made himself a dog and bayed the 
moon. 

The sun, meanwhile, had gone down, right before 
us over the land, and we saw a twilight as beautiful 
as any yet presented to us within the tropics. 
These sights, so frequent in these regions, are the 
result of a great mass of vapor which rises from 
the Plata River and from the huge streams which 
form it. These vapors collecting on high when the 
air is calm, are flooded with light, which they refi'act 
and shade off into tints and colors which pass all 
imagination. The horizon was one flaming zone 
broken into shapes of golden cathedral spires; pyra- 
mids of rubies ; towers of white-hot iron ; lofty 
arches built of burning coals, which slowly made 
way for other shapes less lofty but more strange, 
until nothino^ was there but the o^lowino: ruins of a 
demolished city and at last an endless row of fierce 
Titanic eyes that glared at us. The sky above was 
dark, the sea below was black. At the sight, silence 
settled down upon the fore deck once more, as if all 
were some mysterious manifestation belonging to this 
region alone. An island or two were seen, Lobos on 
the left, Gorriti on the right. Then Flores, and then 
the light on the Archimedes bank. The silence for- 
ward was so profound that the throb of the engine 
was distinctly heard. The ship moved as if upon 
the waters of a lake. 

" What a calm sea ! " exclaimed an emigrant. 



366 ©n Blue Mater. 

" We are not at sea," said a sailor near me, *' we 
are in the river." 

The emigrant and those about him turned to look 
for the other shore and, seeing nothing but the clear 
line of the sea horizon, were somewhat doubtful ; but 
we were indeed in the Plata River, whose right bank 
was more than a hundred miles away. 

When the last rays of the twilight had disap- 
peared, we saw the light-house of Montevideo, a for- 
est of masts, and a confused line of buildings lighted 
vaguely here and there. 

By this time, it was clear that we were not to 
land that evening. Everybody was fatigued by the 
emotions of the morning, but all remained on deck 
to enjoy the sight of coming to anchor. 

Accordingly, a little farther on, the ship began to 
slow down until she hardly moved, and at last that 
mighty heart of fire and iron, which had been beating 
so unweariedly for twenty-two days, gave its final 
throb and the great Colossus stopped — dead. A 
whistle from the bridge, and two huge anchors fell 
from the bows, dragged, with thunder sound and 
lightning speed, the great chains from the hawse- 
hole eyes, which flashed fire the while ; the sea 
foamed, the ship trembled and then was still. Her 
two huge talons had fastened upon the bottom of 
the river. 

The emigrants stood a few moments to taste the 
new sensation of utter quiet, and then, in long pro- 



Hrnerica* 367 

cession, descended to their cabin. The iirst-class 
passengers, no longer tempted by the cool breeze, for 
it fanned us no more when the ship came to a stand- 
still, soon went down also. 

And I remained there, almost alone, amazed that, 
after having so often thought the voyage insiipport- 
ably long, it should at this moment seem to have 
been so short, so like a vague passing dream, although 
there was so much that I remembered. Having 
seen nothing by the way to fix the distance in my 
mind by any distinct landmarks, so to speak, each 
day was exactly like the rest ; and I seemed to 
have crossed that mighty stretch of water at a leap. 
Except, perhaps, the hurricane, no incident of the 
voyage has remained stamped on my memory like 
the impressions of these, its last moments. The 
mighty stream was moveless and still, as if its w^eary 
waters were resting after their two-thousand-mile 
journey from the mountains of Brazil ; the sky was 
dark and tranquil ; the city of Montevideo w^as asleep, 
not a sound or a movement in the harbor; the shij) 
was quiet ; the profoundest silence weighed upon 
everything ; a silence that seemed to come from far, 
from great rivers, from boundless plains, from vast 
forests, from the thousand summits of the Andes ; 
the mysterious and awful silence of a slumbering 
continent. 

The captain roused me from my reflections as he 
passed me by, rubbing his hands — a most unusual 



368 On Blue Mater. 

thing — as if in that rough old sea-dog head of his 
there was the comfortable expectation of a quiet 
night. I Avas tempted to give him his own refrain . 
Porcaie a hordo . . . 

But he prevented me by asking me with a serious 
face : 

"What do you think your friends at home are 
about just now ? " 

I looked at my watch, and answered : '^ At this 
hour my house is all dark and everyone is asleep." 

He began to laugh, and rubbed his hands more 
than ever : " Anclie voscid scid gli^e clieito ! (Anche 
lei c' e cascato) — Ah ! my dear sir, have I caught you 
too ! At this hour it is broad day at home, and your 
children are wantino^ their coffee and their milk. " 

I had not thought of that. 

But the fine old captain, who was in high good- 
humor, asked me if before leaving I had charged the 
agent to inform my family as soon as he heard of 
our arrival? 

I had done so. 

" Well, then," he said, " in three hours your fam- 
ily will know that we have reached America — all 
well." 

I had not thought of that any more than of the 
other, so in high good-humor myself, I went below 
to sleep for the last time under the deck of the 
Galileo, 










CHAPTER XX 




THE PLATA RIVER 

O sleep? Mentita speme! False 
Hope ! — 

As happens to everyone after 
a clay of agitation, to be followed 
by one not less agitating, the 
passengers slept no more than 
they were forced to do by absolute fatigue. Towards 
two in the morning all were aw^ake, and what with 
sighs from the ladies, yawns from the men, and talk 
in undertones which in the silence of the moveless 
vessel sounded like the humming of great flies, there 
was no more quiet. An hour before dawn, hurried 
steps were heard and the voice of the doctor, sent 
for in haste to the Sisrnorina from Mestre who had 
fainted. The effort she had made to go on deck and 
visit the forecastle once more had been too much 
for her. Then the little Brazilian began to sci'eani, 
the negress to croon to him ; aud after that everyone, 
springing from his berth, began noisily to get his 
24 369 



370 Qn Blue Mater* 

things in order, chatting and talking without any 
regard whatever. And when at daylight the stew- 
ards and stewardesses, after wrangling for half an 
hour in the passages, came into our staterooms with 
the coffee, they found everyone on foot, washed and 
brushed and with the expected gratuity ready to 
hand over. 

Ruy Bias, as he presented the tray, wished me a 
long and happy sojourn in America, and his air was 
as correct as the air of any valet on the boards ; but 
his voice was so languid and his eye so utterly fishy 
that any child could perceive how broken down he 
meant to have it understood that he was at the 
prospect of parting with that mysteiious creature 
who possessed his affections. While I was absorb- 
ing the coffee, he was looking at the sky through the 
airport ; biting his underlip as if to repress the ut- 
terances of a wounded heart ; and then, as he ac- 
cepted my little offering, he tempered the humility 
of that act with a bow full of elegance and dignity. 
Slipping out immediately after him, 1 saw him 
enter the stateroom of the priest, whose big voice I 
sti'aightway heard counting slowly — Dos, tres, cinco, 
seis ; francs, as I surmise, which Ruy Bias had to 
receive with open hand like a beggar, but quivering 
Vv'ith shame as he thought of the queen of his soul. 

On deck I found the captain and officers on duty. 
A gallooned official of the port of Montevideo and a 
doctor had come on board ; the former a great big 



Zbc Plata IRivet* 371 

man witb a thread of a voice, the latter a little man 
with a voice like a bass drum ; and, having inquired 
into the sanitary condition of the passengers, the two 
went forward to count the crew. All the thii-d- 
class passengers, the while, were being assembled on 
the main deck in order to pass in review before the 
Uruguayan official, that be might number them, and 
before the doctor that he might set aside suspected 
cases. From amidships they were to pass one by 
one over the bridge which spans the piazzetta, and 
then, leaving the deck by the starboard ladder, go 
forward again. Upon the ample midship deck thei'e 
was not one square foot of empty space ; a crowd 
as dense as a reo^iment in column covered it from 
one end to the other ; all silent, save for a slight 
murmur. The sky was cloudy ; the enoi'mous river 
of a yellow mud color. The far-off city of Monte- 
video appeared like a long whitish streak upon the 
brown coast, rising at the western end upon the 
solitary Cerro, the hill of Garibaldi : a simple and 
majestic landscape which silently awaited the com- 
ing of the sun. In the distance could be perceived 
the smoke of two or three small steamers that were 
coming out to us. 

I went on deck to see for the last time my sixteen 
hundred fellow-travellei's. The captain, the officers, 
the ship's surgeon, and the Uruguayan official with 
the doctor came up a moment afterwards and the 
sad procession commenced. Sad, not only in itself, 



372 ©n Blue Mater* 

but because, counting that throng like a herd of 
animals without care for any name, gave the idea 
that the poor creatures were told off for sale; that 
we saw not citizens of a European state, but victims 
of a raid of kidnappers upon the shores of Africa or 
Asia. The first passed slowly, but seeing that the 
port official showed impatience, the captain made a 
sign and the rest moved on more rapidly, filing by 
almost on the run. Families passed together ; the 
father fii'st, then the women with their infants in their 
arms and leading the older children by the hand ; 
the old people came last. Almost all had with them 
bundles of property too precious to be left in the 
cabin. Many were neat and clean ; dressed in good 
clothes which they had kept for that occasion. 
Others were worse off than when they set out ; ragged, 
and soiled with all the uncleanness to be gathered 
by lying about for three weeks in every corner of a 
crowded ship. There were unshaven beards and 
bare necks. There were some with toes out of their 
shoes ; some even hatless ; and more than one holding 
tojiether with both hands a buttonless lacket to 
conceal the hairy nakedness of his breast. Pretty 
girls, bowed old men, striplings of twenty years old^ 
workmen in blouses, long-haired priests, Calabrese 
peasant women with their green corsets. North Lom- 
bardy pipers,Brianza women with the radiating crown 
of long pins stuck in their hair, and women from the 
mountains of Piedmont with their white caps. 




Ibavbor Stcamec an& ."ffiavge. 



374 ®n JSlue Mater* 

All these came on in endless procession, each one 
stepping in the other's tracks, as on a scaffold at the 
back when the flight of a whole people is to be rep- 
resented on the stage. Some skipped along as if to 
show how light-hearted they were ; others passed 
with grim faces, looking at no one, as if offended at 
this exposure that was made of them. The bour- 
geois and the middle-class women, who yet had 
about them some signs of former prosperity, went by 
with heads down, all ashamed. The slow old people 
and the encumbered women were shoved aside or 
driven brutally on by those who came behind ; the 
children cried for fear of being trodden on ; those 
who were jostled cursed and swore. How many 
faces that I knew well did I see go by ! There is 
the man that sent the telegram to his wife, his face 
full of jolly wrinkles and looking as if he believed 
us yet. There is that old orator in the green frock, 
running by with his gray head bare as usual, and 
casting a look of hate and defiance at the first-class 
passengers on the deck above. There is the tattooed 
mountebank ; the two slatternly choristers ; the fam- 
ily from Mestre, with young Galileo, who takes his 
breakfast as he goes along ; there is the ex-porter 
with his pictures ; the fair Genoese, who goes by 
with blushing cheek and eyes cast down ; the large 
Bolognese crossing the bridge with imperial walk, 
her inseparable satchel at her side ; the Madonna of 
Capracotta, the bai'king barber, the putative honii- 



Ubc Plata IRivcv. 37S 

cide of the forecastle, and the poor widow of the 
murdered man. 

As they filed along, all the sad and comical inci- 
dents of that strange life of twenty-two days passed 
through my mind ; the varied feelings of disgust 
and of sympathy, of kindness and of mistrust, which 
those people had raised in me ; all now lost in one 
deep sentiment of sorrowful and tender pity. And 
still they went by as if their number had been 
doubled in the night. Family after family, chil- 
dren and yet more children, city faces, country faces, 
from Northern Italy, from Southern Italy; good 
honest creatures, brigands, invalids, ascetics, old 
soldiers, beggars, rebels, passing ever fast and faster, 
as if urged by the dread of not reaching America in 
time to get their bit of bread and their strip of earth. 

What a procession ! Endless, most pitiful ! And 
at the back of all this grievous misery, imagination 
held up to me, as in mockery, the patriotic rejoicings 
of the idle, the prosperous, and the unthinking, as they 
shout with holiday enthusiasm in the banner-dressed 
and glittering squares of Italy. I felt a humiliation 
which made me shun the reo^ard of forei2:ners who 
were in the ship with me and whose affected excla- 
mations of pity and surprise were only so many 
reproaches to my country. And still those ragged 
garments, those white hairs, those withered women, 
those children without a country, that nakedness, 
that shame, that misery kept filing on. The spec- 



376 ©n Blue Matet* 

tacle endured for half an hour, which seemed a whole 
eternity. At length the friar with his face of wax, 
his hands buried in his sleeves, went slowly by ; 
then came the little band of Swiss with their red 
caps, and at last, — at last there was an end of it. 

From the first tender that reached us there came 
on board a tribe of people, friends and relatives of 
the passengers ; who, running through the ship, 
sought for the faces and called out the names of 
those they were to meet. Then began the greetings, 
the embracings, and the kissings. Three gentlemen 
approached the one we had called the '' thief," and 
while we were waiting to see them take him into 
custody, uncovered, and profoundly bowing addressed 
him as Monsieur le Ministre. There ! That is what 
it is to judge of a man by what one can see. But 
we had not time to be properly astonished, for our 
attention was straightway drawn to a painful scene. 
A young gentleman, well dressed and handsome, but 
repellent of look, came rushing towards my two 
neighbors of below, who ran to meet him exclaiming 
" Attilio ! " But at a couple of paces off they stood 
still, waiting for him to select one for the first em- 
brace, as if that choice were to be his final judgment 
of the past and their sentence for the future. The 
youth hesitated for a moment, looking at them both 
but wholly without emotion ; then flung himself into 
the lady's arms. She clasped him to her breast with 
what would have seemed deep tenderness had it 



XTbe Plata 1Riv>ei% 377 

not been belied by a Satanic look of triumph which 
she cast in that very moment at her husband. He 
turned as pale as death and seemed about to fall to 
the deck, but he controlled himself with an effort 
and looked around him with a smile most dreadful 
and most piteous to see. The young gentleman, 
leaving the mother, approached him and pressed 
upon his pale cheek a cold kiss which the father 
seemed powerless to return. All turned their eyes 
away with horror, as if from the sight of murder ; 
and I myself hastened forward without daring to 
cast another look upon the unhappy man. 

And here another piteous scene awaited me. A 
knot of old people, men and women, surrounded the 
commissary ; frightened, anxious, and begging with 
trembling lips for comfort and advice. These were 
the solitary sexagenarians who could not land with- 
out some relative to answer for their subsistence. 
But the relatives they expected had not appeared ; 
and naturally enough, for the landing was to be 
made at Buenos Ayres ; but, confounding Uruguay 
with Argentina, they gave themselves up for lost. 
What was to become of them ! Imagine the despair 
and agony of these poor creatures, who, having left 
Europe, found themselves, as they supposed, rejected 
from America like useless human carcasses, not even 
good for fertilizing the ground, and frantic already 
with the idea of returning to a country where they 
would find no one to love them, no house to live in, 



378 Qn Blue Maten 

no bread to eat. The commissary tried to persuade 
them that they were in Uruguay and not in Argen- 
tina, that their friends were to meet them in Buenos 
Ayres, on the other side of the river which they 
saw before them, that they were tormenting them- 
selves about nothing, that they should take courage. 
But they would hear no reason, they were stunned 
with fright, and seemed only the more miserable 
and unhappy in the midst of the joyous and noisy 
young fellows who jostled them at every moment, 
crying out : " Courage, old fellows ! — Long live the 
Republic ! — Viva I'America ! — Viva la Plata ! " 

I managed to get the commissary aside for a 
moment, and in taking leave of him gathered some 
final news of the poor young bookkeeper. In despair 
at seeing the last of his fair Genoese, who landed 
at Montevideo, he was in convulsions and was up- 
setting the whole cabin. Then I went to shake 
hands with the other officers, whom I was to see 
two months later at Buenos Ayres, after their return 
from Italy once more. And I wished also to see 
my poor old hunchback. I found him at the door 
of the kitchen with a saucepan in his hand. '' Oh ! at 
last ! " he exclaimed, with a sigh of satisfaction. 
" Twelve days without any women ! " " Yes," I said, 
"and I suppose you will end by taking a wife." 
Jlfi ! he answered, touching his bosom with his fin- 
ger. Piggla mogge ! — " I a wife ! " Then, speaking 
Italian with a queer declamatory accent, " That will 



Zbc Plata Mvcv. 379 

never be " ; and be whispered joyously in my ear 
"Twelve days!" But seeiiic^ the captain coming, he 
squeezed my hand and huniedly saying ^^ Scignoria, 
hon viaggio ! " he turned his poor crooked back and 
was seen no more. 

Meanwhile some more tenders had come along- 
side and one was at the after gangway. I went on 
deck again to say good-bye to the passengers who 
were getting into her in a confusion of baggage and 
a turmoil of hand-shaking and mutual good wishes. 
Here, too, was another proof of how difficult it is 
to know much about people on a voyage. Some 
passengers, with whom I had been all the time on 
terms of intimacy almost friendly, went off without 
saying so much as " Go to the deuce ! " (Crepa ! )^ or 
at most wdth a tip of the hat, as if they had forgotten 
me. Others, with wdiom I had not exchanged a word, 
came to take leave with an affectionate sincerity 
that amazed me. And the same thing happened to 
other people. The Marsigliese was cordial. He 
said over and over again that he was fond of Italy, 
because men like himself were superior to the 
jealousies of governments, and that he was going 
to do his best to make Italians and Fi*ench get on 
with one another in Argentina, lacliez cCen faire 
aidant panni vos coinjMtriotes. Quanf a moi^ on me 
connait dans les deux colonies. On sait^ he con- 
cluded with a solemn gesture, que fapporte la paix. 
Adieu! The agent presented himself to take leave 



38o m mine mater, 

of the young couple who were embarrassed by their 
Just dread of a Parthian shot. '' I imagine," he 
said, that you will not have any more difficulty with 
the language in America after so much practice — 
you know." — And they ran down the ladder. Then 
he set upon the poor advocate, who was just de- 
scending with a round roll of something, probably a 
life preserver, under his arm. " Avvocato," he said, 
*' I suppose you feel now that all your troubles are 
over." But the other, eying the water askance, 
growled out : '^ There 's no knowing ; sometimes this 
beastly river is worse than the Atlantic Ocean " — 
and down he went, with all possible precaution, 
taking no notice of anybody. The blonde lady 
and her husband passed down, then my neigh- 
bors with their son, then the "beast tamer," the 
pianist with her mother, the Frenchmen, the priest, 
the second-class passengers, and others. 

When all were oif and seated on the little quarter- 
deck, the agent gave me a nudge with his elbow, 
exclaiming "Eureka ! " Following his eye, I looked 
to the right and saw on the deck of the Galileo, 
leaning against the bulwark in the correct attitude 
of a thoughtful and afflicted lover, Ruy Bias, his 
regards fixed upon the tender. They pointed di- 
rectly at the little piano-player, pale and impassive 
as ever, but with her eyes fastened upon him and 
giving no uncertain promise on the first occasion of 
one of those mad letters, those rash outbreaks of 



XTbe Plata IRiver* 38' 

writing, in which she worked off from a distance her 
morsels of suppressed passion. "Ah poor little 
Maria of Neiiboiirg," said the agent, "Queen of 
dead cats ! " But the tender was moving off. All 
waved their hands. The plump lady blew a kiss to 
the Galileo with an ardent gesture. I saw once 
more my poor neighbor seated at a distance from 
his wife and son. A fresh life of misery and torture 
was beginning for him. And I caught flying as it 
were a queer salute from the Swiss lady, who, not 
knowing which to select from the many friends who 
were looking at her from above, took in with one 
wide glance of sweet gratitude the whole of the 
Galileo's quarter-deck. The last one that I marked 
was the professor seated next her, his back bent, 
smiling with half-shut eyes and his tongue in his 
cheek, as if in mockery of his wife, her lovers, the 
Atlantic Ocean, the old continent and the new. 
Then all these faces melted away and were lost to 
my sight forever. 

Meanwhile there came alongside another tender, 
which was to take oif the Argentines, the Brazilian 
family, and all the rest. But from delicacy no one 
would go down before the young lady from Mestre, 
who as was well known would have to be carried 
and who had not yet appeared on deck. The cap- 
tain shook his head when asked about her. All 
were waiting in double line at the door of the 
saloon. First came out the Garibaldian, who, taking 



382 ©n 3Blue Mater* 

what was a mark of respect for mere curiosifcy, cast 
round him a glance of scorn. The poor sick lady, 
dressed in black and pale as a corpse, rested her 
head on the back of the chair and her hands on her 
knees as if she could no longer lift them, but in her 
eyes so quenched and languid, and on her li]3S through 
which no breathing seemed to pass, there was still 
that smile of hers so sad and yet so infinitely sweet. 
All uncovered as she passed, and her only answer 
was a kind but soundless motion of the lips. The 
sailors who were bearing her stopped at the enter- 
ing port. The captain, hat in hand, saluted her with 
the curt speech under which many gruff men con- 
ceal real emotion. " Pleasant journey to you, sign- 
orina ; I hope you will get well." Then turned 
sharply to order that the emigrants who were crowd- 
ing around to see the young lady and were keeping 
the air from her, should be made to stand back. 
They stood back, murmuring angrily, but ascended to 
the deck above to see her carried down and watch 
her departure. The Garibaldian was the last to 
speak to her at the head of the ladder. She gave 
him her hand, which he kissed, and then, raising her 
forefinger with a kind reproving air, she said a word 
which I did not catch. He bent his head without 
reply. The two sailors began to descend with great 
care, one liftino: the chair in front and one behind 
and begging the invalid to hold on well. The aunt 
came after them, warning her niece not to look at 




** Bs tbe\! sail out of baibor." 



384 ®n mixxc mater^ 

the water. When they I'eached the bottom, a hand 
on board the tender helped the other two, and quite 
gently they placed her on the after deck with her 
face to the steamer. The other passengers then 
went down and took their places. The Garibaldian 
alone remained on board, leaning on the bulwark 
not far from me. And the tender moved off. 

Then the emigrants crowding against the rail of 
the upper deck broke out into gratitude and ad- 
miration of that angelic creature, whom they had 
seen so often amongst their number, touched by their 
misery, gentle to them as a sister, and from whom 
so many of them had received consolation and sub- 
stantial gifts. No cry was heard, but rather a long 
murmur of greetings in which there seemed to go 
out to her all the good and all the purity which the 
bitterness and sorrow of a toilsome existence had 
left in these poor people. " Buon viaggio, — signorina ! 
— God bless you ! — God restore you ! — Don't forget 
us ! — Fair befall our friend ! — Adieu ! — Good-bye ! " 
And they waved their hats and handkerchiefs. But 
she answered only with a feeble motion of the hand; 
and then, raising her sweet dim eyes to her friend's 
stern face, she made with the same hand the same 
motion, with the forefinger as before, as if to say, 
^' Remember ! " 

The tender was already at a distance, but the 
young creature's form came out clear on the quarter- 
deck, like a dark flower in a nosegay of many 



XTbe Plata IRiver, s^s 

colors. When it showed but as a black dot in the 
distance, something white was seen to move in front 
of it. The waving: of a h an dkei -chief. It was for 
him. I looked. Ah ! that is too much ! Not to be 
moved at such a moment ! But, as I said this to my- 
self, his brow^ frowned, his lip trembled, his bosom 
swelled, and a sob burst from his very heart — one 
only, — short, sharp, deep, irrepressible, as if his whole 
soul had surged up like a billow of ocean. He 
covered his face with his hands. Had the tears 
come at last! Perhaps it was human kindness, love, 
patriotism, pity for his fellow-creature's trouble ; 
perhaps it was all the deep, strong virtues of his 
generous nature that had rushed back into that 
breast of iron through the little rift made by the 
waft of a dying hand. Perhaps it was that the 
storm-hardened soldier, as his great mother. Nature, 
laid a finger on his shoulder, -^ung himself upon her 
breast, once more entreating her forgiveness and 
promising to love and serve her as in the bright 
years of his faith and his enthusiasm. The vision 
had passed, the bright creature was soon to die, but 
her last smile, which was somethiuix more than human, 
would light his pathway to the end, and that flutter- 
ing bit of white would ever dwell upon the horizon 
of his life, the sign of his redemption. 

He remained leanins; with folded arms ac>;ainst the 
bulwark, as if riveted in his place by some new and 
deep emotion which had fastened upon his soul. 



386 ©n Blue mater. 

He was still there as, standing among a group of 
friends on board another tug, I saw the colossal 
Galileo grow short and low before my eyes, but 
still w^ith the thousand heads of those emio^rants 
swarming at her bulwarks, like a crowd of people 
on the bastion of a solitary fortress. And passing 
rapidly in review that twenty-two days' journey, I 
seemed to have been living in a w^orld apart, a life 
which, reproducing in miniature the events and 
passions of the universe, had cleared and quick- 
ened my judgment of men and things. Much 
wickedness there is, much shameful sin, much viol- 
ence, but far more misery and sorrow. The larger 
part of humanity is more sinned against than sinning, 
and suffers more than it inflicts. After hating and 
despising mankind, with no other result than to 
embitter life, and aggravate around us that very 
wickedness that has rendered it odious and detest- 
able, we come back to the only feeling that is wise 
and good : — to love and pity for mankind ; a feeling 
fi'om which all good ai'ises, and out of which the sure 
and certain hope springs up that, in spite of dubious 
signs, the enormous mass of misery in the world is 
getting less and less, and the soul of man is surely 
growing better. 

x\s I put foot on shore I turned to look at the 
Galileo^ and my heart swelled at bidding her adieu, 
as if she were a little strip of my own country which 
had sailed across the sea and brought me to that 



Hbe Plata 1Riv>er« 



587 



spot. She was but a black dash upon the tiorizon of 
that mighty river, yet I could see her flag as it flowed 
and floated in the early rays of the American sun. 
It was as if Italy, with a last salute, commended her 
wandering children to their new adopted mother. 

FiNTS. 














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